


A Soul For A Soul

by KitCat_Italica



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), Aziraphale's Daemon Is A Cat, Because He Is An Adorable Fluffy Bastard, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley's Daemon Is A Snake, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Mostly Follows Canon But With Daemon Things Thrown In, Romance, Their Daemons Love Them Too, There's lots of love here, and each other, for obvious reasons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 21,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27317839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KitCat_Italica/pseuds/KitCat_Italica
Summary: Aziraphale’s dæmon remembers first purring in his arms in Heaven.  Crowley’s dæmon has no memories of before he Fell.  But the cat and snake each have the same goal: to keep their companion safe, and to help them find happiness.Over the centuries, they find that the path toward Aziraphale's and Crowley's happiness always leads toward each other.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 234
Kudos: 179





	1. Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> Right now I've got about 2/3 of this fic written? I was going to wait until it was all 100% ready to go before I started posting, but I've been feeling really down and depressed the last few weeks, so I thought I could use some serotonin by sharing the first bit now. I hope it brings you some as well :) Happy reading!

She was born differently to humans’ dæmons. Like them, she was the external representation of a person’s soul, manifested out of the firmament of the universe. But that was where the similarities ended. 

Humans’ dæmons flitted from one creature to the next as suited their whims when they were children, with the expectation that one day they would settle on a form they liked best. She was created already-settled. A foot tall, four legs and a long, swishing tail. Shaggy white fur all over her body. Pointed, swiveling ears and bright blue eyes. ( _Cat,_ the first human would call her, when he started naming all the animals. Fifty-eight centuries later, one of his descendants would classify her as a _Maine Coon.)_

__

__

Humans’ dæmons were born as infant creatures, blind and squeaking for their mother in whatever animal form they happened to take. She was created fully-grown, in the palm of her Mother’s hand alongside her companion.

 _Hello, Bastet,_ God crooned to her. _Meet your angel._

__

__

Bastet opened her eyes from where the Almighty was stroking her fur. Her eyes met a thousand eyes, all the same color as hers. Holy light spun in infinite wheels around them, matched with two beautiful wings, as blindingly white as Bastet’s fur.

“Hello,” the angel said. He was nervous, but so, so kind. Bastet felt his emotions in her heart, and knew he could feel hers the same way.

 _This is Aziraphale,_ God said to her. _He is part of you, and you of him. Never shall you walk My Creation without the other beside you._

__

__

Aziraphale. The name warmed Bastet all the way to her marrow. Hearing it gave her the sensation of sinking into a soft bed after a long day, or finding a warm fire to sit beside on a frostbitten night. Nothing beat this instant relief of laying eyes on her companion, and knowing that, as long as she was with him, everything would be alright.

She heard God’s smile more than saw it. _I’ll leave you two to get acquainted._

__

__

Somewhere within the eyes, wheels, wings, and light, two hands reached out for her. Bastet bounded into them, nuzzling into the angel’s light. His merry laugh delighted her.

As God gently set them down into the newly-created Heaven, Bastet was still purring in Aziraphale’s arms.

xxx

As a Principality, Aziraphale was created to be a soldier. Though he was nervous to perform his duty, he took it quite seriously.

For untold eons, he led his platoon through their drills. As one unit, the lesser guardian angels glided their weapons through blocks, parries, and thrusts, all in time with Aziraphale’s flaming sword.

As always, Bastet sat by his side, tail swishing back and forth, observing the others and their dæmons. Heaven hosted quite the menagerie of souls by now. Large cats like herself, claws and coats glistening in Heaven’s light. Birds of every feather, taking flight on multicolored wings through the firmament. Equine creatures with flowing, golden manes. Fish with iridescent scales, floating by their angels’ wings with as much grace as if they swam in an invisible ocean.

The Archangel Lucifer had visited them once, observing their training exercises. His dæmon—a phoenix with gorgeous, flame-colored plumage that sparked in the air—had swooped above all their halos in an impressive display. Several of their platoon had gathered close to converse with him afterward in low, hushed voices.

Bastet had hung back. Although angels’ dæmons could theoretically leave their companion’s side over long distances, she didn’t like to stray far from Aziraphale.

“Alright, well done, everyone!” Aziraphale called out to his platoon after another set of drills. “We’ll have an hour’s rest, and reconvene here.”

All the angels saluted him, set down their weapons, and began to mingle. They laughed together, grooming each other’s wings, delighting in their friends. Their dæmons started chasing each other, crowing and yipping happily.

“Shall we join them?” Bastet asked Aziraphale.

Aziraphale’s thousands of eyes glanced at the other angels nervously. “Perhaps another time.”

Bastet shrugged. She leapt up into his arms, nuzzling into his holy light. “You could make friends, you know. You needn’t be so lonely.”

“I’m not—I’m not lonely,” Aziraphale stammered. “I just…” He glanced wistfully at the other angels. “I just want to do as I’m told.”

“And you _are,”_ Bastet assured him. “The Archangel Lucifer seemed quite impressed with our progress. I’m not sure why Heaven needs soldiers, but—”

“Clearly, God has Her reasons,” said Aziraphale. His halo glowed ever-brighter, his wings stretched out in pride. “And I will do as She asks of me, and protect and care for Her Creations.”

Bastet smiled at her sweet, wonderful angel. “I know you will. Just as I will protect and care for _you.”_

__

__

Aziraphale’s many eyes lit up in gratitude. He spent the next hour stroking Bastet’s fur, listening to her low purring.

Perhaps, Bastet thought, Aziraphale was right. They didn’t need to overextend themselves socially, with Lucifer or any other angel. After all, they had each other. Who else could gently pet her fur, and cuddle her in their arms?

No, all they had to do was enjoy their time together, and do as they were told. Surely, God had Her reasons. 

xxx

They soon found out that reason, when the War began. Bastet and Aziraphale couldn’t understand how an angelic rebellion could possibly be in God’s Great Plan, but it must be, or else it wouldn’t be _happening,_ right?

Well, best not to speculate on it. Not in the middle of a battle, anyway.

She and Aziraphale did their best to keep their platoon safe. Aziraphale’s grip was steady on his flaming sword, but Bastet knew it was through sheer force of will, to hide how much he recoiled inside at the violence around him.

The Archangels were somewhere in the universe, confronting Lucifer before he could lead his full assault on Heaven. Aziraphale’s platoon was ordered to defend against the Betrayer’s shock troops if they arrived before their new master. Clearly, they had.

Aziraphale parried the traitors’ weapons easily. He was made for it. But though his opponents left him plenty of openings for a killing strike, he never took the opportunity.

Bastet, meanwhile, darted frantically among the fray, protecting the platoon's dæmons as best as she could. Claws and teeth came in handy here. 

She let the enemy’s dæmons go as soon as they started running.

A burst of pain nearly blinded her as she yowled. She turned to see Aziraphale sprawled on the ground. He was bleeding golden ichor on the pristine tiles. One of the wheels of his essence was broken almost in half.

 _“Aziraphale!”_ she shrieked, and darted over to his side. She wanted to lap at the wound with her tongue, try to heal it with a miracle, _something—_

__

__

“I’ll be fine, my dear,” Aziraphale said, his voice strained. “Please, protect our—”

The angel who must’ve dealt him the blow lunged for him again, along with his panther dæmon. Bastet hissed, fur standing on end, snarling in protective fury. She couldn’t touch this angel— _never touch another’s dæmon,_ was the command every angel knew at their core—but Aziraphale was part of her, he was her _life,_ she would do anything to protect him— 

The angel suddenly cried out. Bastet at first thought his dæmon must’ve been injured.

Instead, the dæmon was nowhere to be seen.

It didn’t make sense. She’d seen the dæmon lunging alongside its angel. One minute it was there, the next… _poof._

__

__

The angel collapsed. His wings began to change color. 

More cries followed his. More angels staggered backward, the pristine white of their wings bleeding into a dull gray, and then even _darker…_

__

__

Bastet cringed on top of Aziraphale. She was trembling, her eyes wide in terror. Aziraphale clutched onto her. She knew they were each afraid of the same thing. 

She huddled against his wings as the floor shattered under the rebellious angels. Their raucous screams echoed through the universe, as an unseen force dragged them millions of lightyears below.


	2. Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bastet and Aziraphale receive a new assignment, don't keep close watch on an apple tree, and make some new acquaintances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Thanksgiving here in the US! I'm so incredibly thankful for all of you lovely readers :) Whether you celebrate or not, I hope you have a wonderful day!

She and Aziraphale received three things after the battle.

The first was a medal for bravery. Aziraphale tucked it away among his wings. Bastet knew he was never looking at the thing ever again.

The second was far more interesting: Aziraphale was being issued a _body._

__

__

It was presented to them for inspection first: a lifeless shell of a thing, draped in white and gold robes. It had lovely white-blond hair, the same color as Bastet’s fur. She pawed and sniffed at the body, intrigued.

The moment Aziraphale settled himself inside it, and looked at her through those two eyes, Bastet immediately decided she loved it. From Aziraphale’s nervous grin down at her, he felt the same way.

The third thing was a new assignment. Aziraphale sounded every bit as surprised as Bastet felt. 

“To _Earth?”_ he asked, incredulous. 

“Yep,” said the Archangel Gabriel. “You’re to take your flaming sword with you, and guard the humans in the Garden.”

“Wait, um…” stammered Aziraphale, “guard…guard against what, exactly?”

Gabriel made his _shouldn’t-that-be-obvious_ face. “The demons, of course.” At Aziraphale’s continued confusion, Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Oh, right. ‘Demons’ with an e, not an æ. You know. The Fallen angels. The ones we’ll fight again in six thousand years’ time, to finally settle things.” As an afterthought, he asked, “Do they even have dæmons, Magdalena?”

Magdalena—his eagle dæmon, who was perched atop his wing, preening both their feathers—shrugged. “They lost their souls when they Fell. How they survived that is beyond me. Who knows what they’re like now, crawling around Down Below without their dæmons. I’d pity them if they didn’t deserve it.”

Gabriel spread his hands in a _whatever_ gesture. “In any case, watch out for any demons, their dæmons if they have any, and if they show up, well”—he made a slicing motion with one hand—“you know the drill.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat nervously. His grip was steady on his flaming sword, but Bastet could see a trickle of sweat roll from his palm onto the hilt.

Gabriel gestured toward the doorway that would lead them to Earth. Bastet trotted after Aziraphale’s heels.

She glanced back, to see Magdalena returning to her preening. The eagle was eyeing Aziraphale with disdain.

Bastet watched Aziraphale’s back until the door shut behind them.

xxx

It didn’t take long for things to go pear-shaped. Or apple-shaped, as the case may be. 

One minute, the two humans—Adam and Eve—had been enjoying the bounty of Eden. The next minute, God was chastising them for disobeying Her commandment, and banishing them from the Garden.

Bastet sat by Aziraphale’s feet as they watched the four mortal figures trek over the sand dunes. She could feel Aziraphale’s worry twining with her own. She tried to comfort him: “At least She let them each choose a dæmon before they left.”

“Yes,” said Aziraphale. “Quite merciful of Her.”

And it was. It had been strange, at first, that the humans had been created without dæmons. Bastet had thought perhaps this was only something for angels. The other animals didn’t have dæmons, either. She supposed they didn't have the same kind of souls.

But now, the humans each had a dæmon of their own. Eve had chosen a goat, Adam a rabbit. The animals had become dæmons the moment they left the Garden, trotting and hopping beside their new companions.

The desert did seem awfully big, though. Bastet hoped they would be alright.

She could still feel Aziraphale’s worry about the sword in particular. She nuzzled her face against his leg to soothe him. From the way his hands still wrung together, his eyes fixed nervously on the humans’ shrinking figures, it didn’t seem to be working.

A sudden stench of smoke and ash beside them startled Bastet. She turned, and nearly jumped out of her fur at the sight of an enormous serpent climbing up the wall of the Garden.

This was no ordinary serpent, though, Bastet knew. This was a _demon._

__

__

The demon rose on the wall, and transformed. Well…not _transformed,_ exactly. More like his serpent’s form peeled off like an extra skin, collecting next to Bastet in a smaller version of a snake. What was left in the large serpent’s place was a tall, human-shaped demon with long, red hair and black wings.

The smaller serpent at his feet must be his _dæmon_ , Bastet realized. The Fallen angels must still have one after all!

The Fallen one and Aziraphale were talking. Bastet only half-listened. She kept her eyes on the small serpent. Snakes could strike at any moment, she knew. She would protect Aziraphale if it came to that.

Clearly, though, it wasn’t going to come to that. The serpent stayed coiled by the demon’s feet, tasting the air with her tongue every so often. She kept glancing up at her demon curiously. 

It seemed odd. Bastet wasn’t sure why.

The oncoming rain snapped Bastet out of her vigil. She hurriedly gathered herself close to Aziraphale to shelter under his wing.

She wasn’t the only one who did so. The demon—Crawly, she thought she heard him call himself?—shuffled to Aziraphale’s side, too. His dæmon followed, till she was right next to Bastet, not an inch of space separating them. Aziraphale obligingly raised his wing over all three of them.

“Apologiesssss,” hissed the serpent, “I didn’t catch your name?”

Bastet blinked in surprise at the politeness, but she reciprocated. “Bastet. And yours?”

“Crawly.”

Bastet blinked again. “Wait, I thought _his_ name was Crawly.”

The serpent tilted her head in the equivalent of a shrug. “They didn’t bother giving us sssseparate namesss. It’s not like our sssoul is important. We’re damned, remember?”

That didn’t sit well with Bastet. Crawly was technically right, even if she was the living equivalent of a soul calling herself unimportant. Commenting on that fact seemed impolite, though, so Bastet refrained.

“Do you like your name?” she asked instead.

Crawly was quiet for a long moment. She glanced up at her human-shaped companion. “I don’t think _he_ doesss.”

Bastet looked up at the red-haired demon, too. He was staring nervously up at the sky. Aziraphale only looked slightly less worried.

The wind abruptly changed, blowing the rain all over Bastet’s fur. She yowled in dismay. “Oh, for Heaven’s sake!”

Crawly chuckled once. “Alright?”

Bastet forlornly shook her fur out. “Of course. It’s something the Almighty has given this world. It can’t hurt an angel.”

She didn’t like the amused look Crawly was giving her. “Right. F’courssse.”

The rain eventually stopped. Bastet still pouted at Aziraphale’s feet, fur dripping in pathetic clumps, soaked to the bone.

“Well,” said the red-haired Crawly, “we’d best be off.” His dæmon obligingly stretched up from the ground, to coil around his arm. “Be seeing you, I s’pose,” he said to Aziraphale.

“I’m afraid so,” said Aziraphale. “Do keep yourselves dry.”

Crawly raised his hand over his shoulder in a _will do_ gesture, spread his wings, and swooped into the sky.

Bastet’s fur miraculously dried itself. She climbed up Aziraphale’s side, to settle on his shoulders. “Thanks for drying me.”

“Oh, did I?” Aziraphale asked. “I must not have noticed.”

Bastet froze. When she moved, she glanced in the direction Crawly had gone.

The demon was nowhere to be seen.


	3. Mesopotamia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bastet and Aziraphale encounter their counterparts again, survive another rainstorm, and discuss loneliness.

For the next thousand years, Bastet explored the world at Aziraphale’s side. They’d quickly decided that they liked it here, and thanked the Almighty numerous times for giving them this assignment to watch over Her humans.

Each new human was now born with a dæmon. Bastet got to know many of them along the way. She watched them and their humans learn to till the soil, grow crops, and build their own dwellings. She’d sampled countless foods and drinks from their tables. (Her and Aziraphale’s first drop of date wine would forever be counted one of their most treasured memories.)

They hadn’t heard from God since Eden. Heaven’s assignments floated in frequently, but they often involved doing things to help and guide the humans, making their lives better. She and Aziraphale enjoyed that.

This time, though, was different.

Bastet sat on the fence where Aziraphale and some humans had gathered to watch Noah work. The humans didn’t know what the boat was for. Bastet and Aziraphale did.

“You’re sure that’s what we’re supposed to do?” Bastet asked.

“Yes, quite certain,” said Aziraphale, in the tone of voice he used when attempting to appear more certain than he actually was. “Gabriel and Michael put it plainly. Noah’s project is to go down without a hitch.”

“And then, everyone else is to…”

Aziraphale glanced away from her. “Yes.”

Bastet looked at the elephants and unicorns filing toward the Ark. “I don’t like it, Aziraphale.”

“I _know_ you don’t, my dear, but it’s not our place to—”

_“Hello, Aziraphale!”_

__

__

Bastet and Aziraphale startled at the red-haired demon popping up next to them. “Crawly,” Aziraphale said nervously.

As he and Crawly started talking, the small serpent dæmon slithered up the fence post to coil next to Bastet. “Hey, you!” she said, smiling wide.

Bastet smiled back, thinly. “Crawly.”

“Long time, no see, eh, Bastet?”

She shrugged. “A thousand years, I think.”

“Weird, that we’ve never run into each other ssssince then. Been up to plenty of do-gooding?”

“Of course. And you’ve been up to wickedness?”

Crawly puffed her red-scaled chest out. “You know me. Crawly and I have been having a _Hell_ of a time up here!”

Bastet nearly laughed at the ridiculous pun. But she soon sobered, as she heard the baby goats bleating in the distance. Their parents had been chosen by Noah to board the Ark. The offspring would stay here, to… 

Well. To stay here.

“So, what are you and Aziraphale up to in this neck of the woodsss?” Crawly asked. “Waiting for this circusss to ssset up?”

Bastet considered. If Crawly knew what God’s latest plan was, she and her demon might try to thwart it. But then again…

“It’s not a circus,” she ended up saying. “God’s going to drown everything for miles around, except for what’s in that Ark.”

Crawly laughed. “Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious. They’ve been wicked.”

“Sure, Her preciousss creationsss are just going to _drown_ because they didn’t measure up to Her standards—”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

Crawly’s smile faded. She looked to the animals boarding the Ark. To the humans watching them. To Noah and his family on board. To Aziraphale, nervously overseeing it all.

Her focus fixed on the angel. “Wait, he’s just going to _let them—”_

__

__

“What are you blaming him for?” Bastet snapped, her fur bristling. “As if he is the sole instrument of the Almighty’s plans?”

Crawly’s gaze turned curious. “Wait, ssso he doesn’t want to?”

Bastet shrugged. “It’s our job. It must be for a reason.”

Crawly scoffed. “And what reason could that be? No, wait, don’t try to answer that. I sssuppose you can’t.”

Bastet had no reply.

Crawly did that strange little head-tilt of a shrug. “Probably a good thing, though. Asking questionsss of the Almighty?” She jabbed her tail in her demon’s direction. “That’sss what made _that one_ Fall from Heaven.”

The oncoming rain wasn’t the only thing that started Bastet’s shivering.

xxx

She and Aziraphale met the Crawlys a few more times here and there. As much as Bastet tried to stay on guard against the serpent’s japes and hissed questions, she had to admit, it was nice to talk to someone their own age. Humans could be lovely sometimes, but it just wasn’t the same thing.

Aziraphale seemed less on-board with the whole idea. “My dear,” he said as he and Bastet ate in a tavern in Jerusalem, “if you could please let me know when they’re on their way, so I can—”

“What, _avoid them?”_ Bastet asked. “How is that a good idea?”

“So we aren’t tempted.”

Bastet gave him a Look from where she perched on his table with her own bowl of stew. “I know tempting is their trade, but come now, you’re an _angel._ You’re made of goodness! If you can’t resist temptation, no one can, and we can throw in the towel on trying to save the humans’ souls.”

Aziraphale gave her a small smile. “You think so?”

She _booped_ his nose with her tail. “I _know_ so.” His smile grew, and he happily tucked into his stew again. 

“Besides,” she said, staring at her paws, trying to sound nonchalant, “it is nice to talk to them sometimes.”

Aziraphale glared at her again. “We’re not _supposed_ to talk to them! We’re supposed to be helping the humans and opposing Evil, not inviting Evil to lunch!”

“I never said anything about lunch,” she snapped back. “Just…I don’t know. It can get lonely here, just the two of us.”

Aziraphale pursed his lips, fiddling his spoon around the bowl. “Apologies. I didn’t realize you were so lonely in my company.”

Bastet tilted her head at him in a gesture of _Really?_ “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I just want you to be happy.”

Aziraphale sighed. “I know, my dear. I know you do.”

They ate in silence. Bastet finished her smaller portion quickly, and laid down to clean her paws.

Aziraphale dished her a second serving from his bowl. She resumed her meal with a rumbling purr.


	4. Rome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a demon and his soul make terrible fashion choices, eat some oysters, and let slip a terrible truth about themselves.

A demon was prowling the streets of Rome. People usually wouldn’t notice, but with the foul mood he was in, his aura was all but screaming _I’m the terror of the Earth, now get out of my fucking way._

__

__

The serpent dæmon on his arm slithered up to whisper in his ear, “Your hair looks _ridiculoussss.”_

__

__

“Shut up,” he snapped back. “I’m in no mood.”

She rolled her eyes. “Like you’re going to tempt anyone looking like that. If the hair and outfit weren’t enough, that pissssy attitude won’t be ssselling any ideas to a third-rate centurion, let alone Caligula.”

“I’m not going to tempt Caligula.”

She nearly fell off his shoulder in shock. “ _What?_ Then what wasss the whole point of our little floating palace excursion just now?”

“You saw him in there. He doesn’t need any help from us.”

“Ssso what are we telling Hell?”

“That it was all to do with us anyway.”

She settled back at that. “Huh. Beatsss working, I sssssuppose.”

He just grunted, and ducked into the nearest tavern he could find.

She hated to see him like this. Ever since the Christ child had been executed, he’d been in a snippy mood. Usually it was nothing a bit of troublemaking couldn’t help, but his fuse had been getting shorter and shorter with each passing year. 

It worried her. She saw the way he’d terrorize inanimate objects. She helped him do it in solidarity, but she knew how deeply unhappy he always was doing it. Just like she also knew he had far fewer cruel feathers in his wings than the other demons in Hell. But if he kept going like this, he might snap, and _really_ hurt someone. Where would that leave them then?

He was lonely, that was a big part of his problem. She’d been on him about it for years now. But hey, maybe he had the right idea, going for a drink?

She slithered off his arm onto the bar the minute he sat down, assuming her usual pep-talk position. “Alright,” she said, “we have a drink, we regroup, we track down the ssseediest characters we can find in this sssstinking city, get a few wilesss going—”

“What have you got?” he called out to the barkeep. “Get me whatever you’ve got that’s drinkable.”

The serpent huffed. Rude. Sure, he was a demon, rudeness was expected. But with _her?_

__

__

“Crawly—Crowley?”

She and her demon turned, to the brightest sight for sore eyes she’d seen in a while: a toga-clad Aziraphale, and his equally-lovely dæmon, Bastet, on his shoulder.

They took the liberty of sidling up next to the demonic pair. Bastet leapt onto the bar. “Is it still Crawly?” she asked the serpent. “I know _he_ changed his name”—she flicked her tail in Crowley’s direction—“but you didn’t say last time if you had.”

“I have, actually,” said the serpent. “It’s Lilith now.”

Bastet made a contemplative noise. She didn’t comment one way or the other, but she sounded pleased, which warmed Lilith more than she thought it would.

Aziraphale gave Lilith a nervous smile. “Pleased to meet you properly then, Lilith. And you, erm, Crowley, yes? Any new changes? Still a demon, then?”

“What kind of stupid question is that, ‘still a demon’?” Crowley snapped at him. “What else am I gonna be, an aardvark?”

Bastet hissed at him out of protectiveness. Lilith curled up tight, her head sinking down into the middle of her coils. _Right, go ahead and embarrass us in front of our only almost-friends. Great going, Crowley._

__

__

She didn’t hear the rest of the conversation, dying of embarrassment as she was. She did notice something warm flickering back to life in Crowley's emotions, though. 

She startled as Bastet’s white, furry face loomed large in her vision, blue eyes staring into hers. “Aren’t you coming?”

Lilith peeked her head out. “Where?”

“Dinner! I still can’t believe you and Crowley have never tried oysters before. Such a shame!”

Lilith glanced at Crowley. He rolled his eyes behind his dark glasses. “C’mere, you,” he grumbled, and placed her on his shoulder. She hugged his bicep in a practiced grip.

It was as much of an apology as he was going to give, and as much as she ever needed.

xxx

Lilith decided to skip the oysters; one sniff was enough to put her off food for the next century.

Bastet rolled her eyes at the declaration. “Come here, then,” she said, “I’ve got something more to your liking.”

She leapt down under the table. Lilith followed her, intrigued, leaving Aziraphale and Crowley to continue talking topside.

Bastet was staring at a hole in the wall near their corner table. Her eyes didn’t blink. Her tail was swishing back and forth. Lilith had to look away, lest her serpentine nature become hypnotized.

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“Shhhh,” Bastet hissed back. “You’ll scare them.”

“Ssscare what—”

A little gray something darted out of the hole. Faster than light, Bastet lunged forward, trapping it in her claws.

Lilith slithered over to it. Sure enough, just as she’d thought: a mouse was dying in the cat dæmon’s claws. 

Lilith gave a low hiss of appreciation. “Okay, when I agreed to dinner with an angel, I didn’t think a random act of violence was on the menu.” 

“Oh, hush,” said Bastet. “I’m a cat, you’re a snake. It’s in our basic natures, as it were. And they’re simply _delicious._ Haven’t you had one?”

“Can’t sssay I have. Eating things isn't mine and Crowley’sss usual passssstime.”

Bastet proffered the dead mouse in her paw. “At least try one. I insist.”

Eh, what the Heaven. Lilith scooped the mouse straight from Bastet’s paw, and swallowed it in one gulp. 

Bastet looked a tad green. “Do you really have to eat it like _that?”_

__

__

Lilith grinned wide as the mouse bulged down her gullet. “I’m a ssssnake. It’ssss in my bassssic nature.”

Bastet huffed. “That won’t do. If you’re not going to savor it, then what’s even the point?”

Lilith rather thought these amusing reactions from Bastet were the whole point, but she refrained from saying so.

Bastet had soon caught two more mice. True to her word, she took her time savoring them. She offered one to Lilith out of politeness, but Lilith demurred with a flick of her tail. “You go ahead, I’m ssstuffed.”

Instead, Lilith occupied herself with watching Bastet eat. The cat dæmon was so methodical about how she ate, taking the time to select the choicest morsels, _ooh_ ing and _ahh_ ing over every bite. Lilith quickly decided that this was her favorite thing to watch in the entire world.

“You’ve been doing thisss for a while,” she remarked. “Catch many mice in Heaven?”

Bastet didn’t even spare her a glance. “There aren’t any mice in Heaven. You know that.”

Lilith froze. 

Bastet froze, as well, as she realized the faux pas. “Er…I mean, there still aren’t. Since you were last there.” She sounded like she wanted to say more, but didn’t know how without wading into further awkward territory. She buried herself in her next bite instead.

Lilith continued with the nonchalance. “I wouldn’t know. He never told me that about Heaven.”

“Mm?”

Lilith shifted her scales against the stone floor. “All of the Fallen lost their dæmonsss when they Fell. Then they made new onesss.”

Bastet started choking on her next bite.

Aziraphale must’ve sensed her alarm. He scooted his chair back to look at the two dæmons at his feet. “Bastet, what’s wrong?”

“We’re fine!” Lilith assured him. “Moussse went down the wrong pipe, is all.”

Crowley gave her a warning glare of _What did you do?_

__

__

Fortunately, Bastet coughed up the mouse bones lodged in her throat before Lilith could reply. “So sorry, dears. Go back to your dinner, please! I’ll be right as rain!”

The angel and demon looked uncertain. But beyond Aziraphale giving her a few token pets on her back, they did as she asked.

The minute they did, Bastet turned to Lilith with wide eyes. “What do you mean, _lost their dæmons?”_ she whispered.

“Exactly that,” said Lilith. “They lost them. Vanished right when their wingsss turned black. Like they were cut away. I dunno, that’sss what thisss one told me.” She jabbed her tail toward Crowley’s sandaled feet. “They would’ve died if they were human, but sssince they’re not, they, I dunno, attached to whatever they could. Rot and mildew, at first. But by the time the Earth was finished, they’d become like animalsss again. Just…not the sssame?”

She’d been trying to reassure Bastet. From the way those blue eyes widened further in horror with every word she’d said, it hadn’t worked.

“It’s not ssso bad, though,” Lilith said defensively. “I’m ssstill here, aren’t I?”

Bastet swallowed. “So…he had another dæmon, before you?”

Lilith could feel her hood fanning out before she could help herself. “Yess. He did. And that’s all he’s told me, so ssssstop asking sssso much about it!”

Bastet flinched at the sudden venom. What did she expect, though?

Lilith was a snake. Venom was in her nature.

They quickly changed the subject.

xxx

The rest of the night went by more smoothly. Bastet and Lilith soon warmed to each other again, and the conversation flowed like wine.

The oh, did the wine _flow._

__

__

Crowley and Aziraphale were far from sober by the time they parted company. Crowley swayed as he loped off into the night, disappearing into a miracled room available at a nearby inn. He collapsed on the bed, toga, sandals, and all, a dopey grin on his face.

Lilith undid his sandals, and flicked the stupid laurel wreath off his head with her tail. “You’re in good spiritssss. Much more tolerable to be around.”

“Sssshuttup,” he hissed back. “M’your demon, dæmon. You love me.”

She sighed. “I do.” She slithered onto his chest to curl up tight. He started absently petting her scales. She hissed in contentment. The insecurity stirred up by the conversation with Bastet, while not gone, had quieted considerably.

“You were right,” said Crowley. He yawned. “He’s nice to talk to.”

“The angel?”

“No, Duke Hastur. Who d’you think?”

Lilith smiled. “Ssstill want to be friendsss with Aziraphale, then?”

Crowley scratched at his chest. He looked about ready to fall asleep. “Hold your horses there. We’ve met, what, eight times? That does not a friend make.”

“Ssssso…” said Lilith, uncoiling slightly to hover her head over Crowley’s, “if we were to ssssee him more often, he might become a friend?”

He raised a brow at her. “And how are we ssssupposed to do that?” he asked, playfully imitating her hiss.

She chuckled, and flicked a kiss on his nose. “I’m sure we’ll come up with sssomething.” 

xxx

Aziraphale was also swaying slightly as he made his way to his current lodgings. As he collapsed in his usual chair in his bedroom, he was still humming a drinking song they’d heard at the restaurant under his breath.

Bastet was quiet.

She had so many questions. She didn’t know if she wanted the answers to any of them, and didn’t know Lilith well enough to ask them, anyway. Especially with how defensive the serpent had become. Still, Bastet couldn't un-know the awful truth she had learned tonight: 

Angels could lose their dæmons. 

She and Aziraphale had heard of a few such rumors, of humans experimenting with cutting people’s dæmons away. Whether it was to secure a weapon for their kingdom, for a sacrifice offered to a god for good harvests, or just for plain old cruelty’s sake. It didn’t matter. It was the most terrible punishment any human had ever dreamed of, to separate someone from their soul. The only thing that gave Bastet solace was that none of them had succeeded.

But apparently, _God Herself_ had succeeded.

How did that work, though? How had angels survived their souls being cut away? How had they turned ‘rot and mildew’ in Hell into _their new soul?_ Dæmons didn’t just grow on trees. You couldn’t just dream your own soul into being. 

Could you?

Crowley could, apparently. Lilith was as real a dæmon as any Bastet had come across. And she was such a dear, too.

“You’re awfully quiet.”

Bastet turned to Aziraphale’s soft smile. His cheeks were still flushed from the wine. His angel-winged toga pin was askew.

God Almighty, she loved him.

He patted his lap. She leapt up to it, settling under his gentle hands.

“I thought you wanted to spend more time with Crowley and Lilith,” Aziraphale said as he stroked her fur. “Did you not have a good time? Crowley is just lovely. For a demon. Oh, well, not just for a demon, he’s quite enjoyable to talk to—”

“Lilith wasn’t always his dæmon.”

His hands paused. “What?”

“He had another dæmon, when he was an angel. Before he Fell.”

Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Lilith told you this?” 

She nodded.

“But…how did she…?”

“He made her, or something. I don’t know. The Fallen, they all imprinted on something, built their souls back with their minds.”

“But what happened to their dæmons?”

“They…" Bastet paused. Trying to go on. "Remember during the war? That angel that was about to attack us, his dæmon…it just disappeared? I think…I think God took them away. Cut them away, or something.”

Aziraphale’s hands tightened in her fur. “But…but the Almighty, She wouldn’t…whatever Crowley did, I’m sure it wasn’t…Lilith must’ve been exaggerating, or something—”

Bastet looked up at him with wide, watery eyes. Aziraphale stared back at her, growing horror spreading on his face, as he realized exactly what she was telling him.

“Please don’t Fall,” she begged. _“Please.”_

__

__

Aziraphale pressed his lips together. When she started to tremble, he cradled her close to his chest, tenderly stroking through her fur. “I won’t,” he whispered. “I promise you, I won’t.”

Bastet could only quiver, and curl up tight, and try to let her angel’s reassurances be enough for her.


	5. England

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bastet and Aziraphale try to stay away from Lilith and Crowley, but fail miserably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Depression and loneliness has hit me hard again recently, and this is one of the only things that I kind of still like doing? At the risk of sounding selfish, if you'd like to say hi in the comments, I could really use that little bit of connection. I don't bite, I promise <3

It was hard to stay away from Crowley and Lilith. Every few years, they’d turn up, their affected nonchalance doing a poor job of hiding how very glad they were to see Aziraphale and Bastet.

Aziraphale did his best to make up excuses. Bastet did her best to warn him they were coming. But it seemed every time, they’d wind up having dinner together, going to theater performances with each other, or wandering the city streets side-by-side with a skin of wine.

Every time, she and Aziraphale were in a much better mood than before. Which made it harder for them to convince each other to stay away from the demonic pair.

“No more,” Bastet told him one morning. “Last night was the last. We’ll make our own human friends, and brush him off the next time we see him.”

“Right,” said Aziraphale. “This was the last time.”

Neither of them were convinced, and they knew it.

xxx

Once Rome fell, they eventually moved to Britain. It was a land rife with lawlessness and cruelty, as so many lands were these days. Aziraphale and Bastet hoped to rectify that. 

Convincing the local lords to contribute to less cruelty, however, was easier said than done.

Lord Aethelwulf—Aethelsted? Aethelwig? Aethel-something—had been happy to host them in his hall when Aziraphale had said he was a servant of God. But it became clear that the lord was searching for God’s favor in securing him more riches in this life, rather than a just reward in the next one. Still, the side of Good had to be persistent, so Aziraphale took him up on his offer to let them stay the night in his castle. 

It was when a servant was leading them to their chambers that Bastet smelled it. 

“They’re here,” she whispered in Aziraphale’s ear.

Aziraphale lowered his wine goblet he’d been drinking out of. “Who?”

“Crowley and Lilith. I can smell them.”

Aziraphale tapped the aged, hunched servant on the shoulder. “Pardon me, but would there be any other guests under your master’s roof tonight?”

The servant grinned, showing off his five missing teeth. “Not counting the prisoner, no. But he won’t be here much longer.”

Aziraphale and Bastet shared a glance. “In that case,” said Aziraphale, “I think I’d better go and see this poor fellow. In case he does…leave soon…perhaps I could administer some last rites?”

The man shook his head. “Master says he’s not to be disturbed.”

Aziraphale sighed, and snapped his fingers. The man and his bloodhound dæmon came to a stop, their expressions blank. “Now,” Aziraphale said testily, “you _will_ lead me to this prisoner, won’t you, dear?”

“Of course,” the man said in a monotone voice. He turned a corner and disappeared down a flight of stairs. Aziraphale followed.

Bastet dug into Aziraphale’s shoulders. “What are you _doing?”_ she hissed.

“I can’t just leave him,” Aziraphale hissed back. “And if it’s a rescue he needs, that’s hardly grounds for us Falling. Quite the opposite, I’d imagine.”

If Bastet had truly wanted to argue, she could have pointed out that Crowley was a demon of Hell, and therefore a net contributor toward Evil in the world. Ergo, Heaven’s mission was best served by letting Crowley be discorporated for a few years.

Instead, she clung tightly to Aziraphale’s shoulders, and braced for whatever they would find in the dungeons.

xxx

Thankfully, Lord Aethel-something hadn’t wheeled out the truly awful torture devices yet. He was, however, hovering a nasty-looking hot poker right above Crowley’s uncovered eyes. Crowley and Lilith, meanwhile, were squirming on the table they’d been strapped to.

Bastet could feel Aziraphale’s distress, as his fingers tightened around his goblet. He quickly raised one hand, and with a snap of his fingers, the hot poker vanished into the mid-Atlantic. “Really, there’s no need for this!” he exclaimed.

The lord whirled around. “Ah—you—what—who let you in here—”

“Never mind that. Please, I really must protest your treatment of this”—he quickly glanced at Crowley’s attire to guess his gender presentation—“this _man—”_

__

__

“Who are you to say what I can and cannot do in my own castle?” the lord snapped.

“Oh, hey, angel,” said Crowley, giving Aziraphale a little wave as best as he could from his restraints. “Brought me some wine, I see. Well done.”

“I’m the one who says this _stops_ ,” Aziraphale said to the lord. “Now, if you’ll just let him go, we’ll be on our way—”

“Heh, right, ‘on your way,’” the lord drawled. “And you say you’re a holy man. If you really were, you’d see what I see. Look!” He jabbed his finger at Crowley’s eyes. Crowley and Lilith both hissed. “He’s an unholy demon, come to drag us down to Hell!”

“Yes, well, that doesn’t mean you need to make such a fuss about it,” Aziraphale said haughtily. “You could politely tell him you’re not interested.”

“Yeah,” Crowley muttered, “‘cause that’s what _you’ve_ been doing all this time.”

_“Do you want my help or not?”_

__

__

“Fine, _yes,_ but could you hurry the Heaven up about it?”

The lord bolted. His boar dæmon snorted threateningly, pawing at the ground, as Aethel-something grabbed another hot poker from the fireplace. 

Brandishing it in fury, the lord lunged at Aziraphale. Bastet’s fur stood on end as she hissed.

_Snap._

__

__

With a miraculous chime, the lord and his dæmon vanished into thin air.

Aziraphale sighed. Bastet knew he didn’t usually like sending humans to far-flung places unannounced. 

With another snap of his fingers, Crowley’s restraints popped open. He sat up, rubbing his wrists. “Took your sweet time with it,” he grumbled.

“Like you couldn’t have freed yourself,” Aziraphale grumbled back. “Was the plan to tempt him to sin while you were tortured?”

“Do I look stupid to you? F’course that wasn’t the plan. And for your information, I couldn’t just free myself. The restraints were blessed.”

Aziraphale faltered. “Oh.”

Now that Bastet was looking, she noticed how Crowley’s wrists and neck were singed slightly red where the restraints had pressed into them. Lilith’s scales were a darker black where she'd been bound. She coiled into Crowley’s hands, trembling.

“Lucky we were here, then,” Aziraphale murmured into the next sip from his goblet.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Crowley. He glided onto his feet, with a fluidity that looked deliberately too effortless, as if assuring everyone that _yes, I’m actually fine._ He glanced around, muttering, “Now, if that idiot did anything to my glasses…”

Bastet was way ahead of him. She’d darted down from Aziraphale’s shoulder, to grab the ruined remains of the dark glasses from the fireplace. A simple miracle restored them to their pristine state.

She leapt up onto the table to better reach Crowley. “Here,” she said around the glasses in her mouth.

Crowley stared at her. It took him a second to unfreeze enough to cautiously take the glasses from her.

Bastet shrugged. “For what you did at the first rainstorm. Now we’re even.”

She could feel Aziraphale’s confusion. She could visibly see Lilith’s. Crowley, meanwhile, guarded his expression the instant he slid the glasses onto his nose.

“So,” he mumbled, “I’d best be off. Wiling and stuff to be…wiling. Yep.” He staggered toward the door. As he passed Aziraphale, he grabbed the goblet, drained the rest of the wine in three quick gulps, and took it with him as he left the dungeon.

Aziraphale turned to Bastet in confusion. “What was that all about?”

“I’ll tell you later,” she said, jumping onto his shoulders again. “Let’s take our leave, too. I don’t imagine Lord Whatsit’s household will be very welcoming to us after we vanished their master.”

“No,” said Aziraphale, “I suppose not. I didn’t send him far, though. Only to Cornwall.”

“That’s still over two hundred miles away!”

Aziraphale pursed his lips as he climbed up the dungeon stairs. “And he’ll have plenty of time during his journey home to reflect on the error of his ways. We may have saved his soul after all.”

Bastet’s brow raised at that tenuous logic. But as they went to find the most discreet exit from the castle, she couldn’t help her secretive grin.


	6. Arrangement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lilith and Crowley have a proposition, and Bastet and Aziraphale try something new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said before, I've written a lot of this in advance, but I've been playing around with where the chapter breaks should go. I also rewrote a section of this chapter. It's all a mess :P My apologies for the delay in posting! I'll try not to let it happen again.

During King Arthur’s reign, Crowley brought up the idea of working together.

When he’d presented it to Lilith, it had sounded like a wonderful idea. She’d egged him on to tell Aziraphale. “What’sss the worst that could happen?” she’d pointed out.

Well, Aziraphale and Bastet stomping away in a huff over the damp English earth…that was probably close to the worst thing.

“It’s a minor sssetback,” Lilith tried to assure Crowley as he stalked into the mist. “They’ll come ‘round, just you wait and sssee—”

“Yeah,” Crowley grumbled, “because ‘absolutely not’ and ‘we’re not having this conversation’ leaves plenty of room for interpretation. He’s probably still on the fence about it.”

Lilith sighed. Crowley plopped himself down in front of the campfire. The men he’d recruited into his little outlaw band knew better than to join him right now. They kept their distance, lurking in the mist with their dæmons. They were good at lurking; Duke Hastur would’ve been impressed.

“We’ll try again,” Lilith murmured in his ear. “They’re as lonely as we are, you know. And they do _like_ usss. They’re jusst afraid.”

Crowley blew out a loud breath. It misted in front of him in the chill.

“Trusst me,” said Lilith. “When have I ever led you astray?”

Crowley turned to her, arching an amused brow. 

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” Lilith snapped. She burrowed between his armor plates, to settle next to his tunic underneath. She could feel the vibrations of his chuckle from deep in his chest.

She spent the rest of the evening curled up in his warmth, lulled by the soporific rhythm of his beating heart.

xxx

Lilith was right, eventually. It just took another few centuries. 

A few long, lonely centuries.

It wasn’t like they didn’t _see_ Aziraphale and Bastet. They crossed paths at the hotbeds for guiding souls toward sin or virtue. They were pleasant enough. But each time, whenever talk of the proposed mutual ceasefire would crop up, the angelic pair would fall silent, and make their excuses to leave. 

Until one day.

They’d met in Germany, of all places. Some pope was meeting with some emperor to discuss potential war with the Byzantines. Aziraphale was sent to make sure the two rulers got along; Crowley was sent to ensure the opposite.

And yet, they spent the first evening of negotiations in Aziraphale’s lodgings at a nearby inn, going glass-for-glass on the local schnapps.

“And whaddif they decide to go through with it?” Crowley slurred from where he was pacing around the room. “They go to war…march on the Byzantines…people _die._ And that’s jusss’okay?” 

“Heaven wants the papacy _respected,”_ Aziraphale said slowly, carefully, like his words would get away from him if he didn’t concentrate. “War will cement that authority—”

“Yeah, can’t see how that would go wrong. N'what if they _lose?”_ Crowley gestured wildly with his glass. “All that respect goes out the window, right?”

“Everything good comes with risk,” Bastet pointed out from her spot at Aziraphale’s feet.

Crowley threw back another swallow of his drink. He burped loudly. “Thought you’d say that.”

“She hasss a point.”

Crowley, Aziraphale, and Bastet all turned to where Lilith was coiled by the fireplace. Her unblinking yellow eyes were staring straight at Aziraphale. “Everything good comesss with risk. And yet it’sss still _worth it.”_

__

__

It took Aziraphale a few seconds longer to recoil than Lilith thought it would. She wasn’t sure if she could chalk it entirely up to the schnapps, either. “Well, those…those are two different things entirely—”

“Which would you rather be doing?” Crowley asked. “Eating, drinking, reading, enjoying all that this world has to offer…or staying stuck inside that drafty palace, listening to Pope Whassisname The Eighth and Emperor Whogivesashit The Second hammer out political agreements?”

Aziraphale had no reply.

Bastet, however, did. “Yes, but if we left it up to _chance,_ they could fall to Evil—”

“—just as if _we_ left it up to chance, they could rissse to Good,” said Lilith. “Sssame chance as if we were both working our tailsss off for our respective sssides, yeah? Sssame result, lesss work.”

Bastet looked down at her paws, swishing her tail. Lilith kept her eyes on her, and could feel Crowley doing the same. _Please please please, they were so_ close—

“What about the concerns regarding our higher ups?” Aziraphale finally asked. “We can’t just be doing _nothing.”_

__

__

“We’ll help you out,” Crowley said. He slumped down in an adjacent chair across from Aziraphale. “Add in a few blessings to our workload, let you two put your feet up.”

“And in return, we would do the same for you?”

Crowley shrugged. “We’d appreciate the offer, angel.”

At the word 'angel', Aziraphale blushed. Bastet’s pupils widened. Lilith didn’t understand the reactions, but she took note of them. 

Lilith cautiously slithered forward, next to where Crowley’s legs were splaying out from where he sat. His voice was uncharacteristically soft when he murmured to Aziraphale, “Nothing bad’s gonna happen to you. Definitely not ‘cause of me.”

Lilith kept her eyes on Bastet. Bastet was staring right back at her. There was fear in those blue eyes, but Lilith got the impression that the cat was giving her some kind of a test. All she could do was keep her eyes bared with honesty, and wait.

Bastet broke the contact. She glanced up at Aziraphale. Some sort of understanding passed between them.

Aziraphale held out his hand to Crowley. Crowley cautiously took it. Angel and demon shook hands on their new arrangement.

At their feet, their souls stared into each other’s eyes, and smiled.

xxx

“Are you _sure_ about this, Aziraphale?” Bastet hissed into his ear.

Aziraphale sighed. “For the thousandth time, yes. We made a deal, after all.”

“A deal with the _Enemy.”_

He gave her a warning glare out his eye corners. “If that were really your concern, you would have stopped me from ever agreeing in the first place. Now chin up. We’ve practiced what to say for weeks now. Crowley assured us this will be the easiest temptation for us to get started with. And stop clawing into my shirt, you’ll ruin it!” 

She retracted her claws. She still clung as tight as she dared to his shoulders. 

Her stomach still didn’t settle as Aziraphale entered the earl's great hall. 

The feast had begun hours ago, but the local lords conspiring to curtail Henry I’s powers were waiting for everyone else to drink themselves under the table until they began their clandestine meeting. Their wives would give the cue to the servants once everyone not in on the plot was well and truly sloshed. Then, the meeting would begin. 

Bastet wasn’t sure why everything hinged on a king having his powers curtailed. Henry wasn’t any better or worse than any other absolute ruler on the continent. He even had a son, ensuring stable succession. What did they have to lose by leaving him alone? 

But apparently, Hell saw the opportunity for chaos if the throne of England was still an autocratic prize worth fighting for. So, Bastet and Aziraphale were going to make sure it still was. 

They found their mark early. The countess had remained at the table while her husband made his rounds of the room, regaling his peers with tales of his victories—in battle, far from his home and family. With every word, her ermine dæmon’s ears drooped where he sat in her lap. 

“Pardon me, my lady,” said Aziraphale, “may I have this seat?” 

“Of course, my lord,” she said delicately. 

Bastet didn’t look at the countess as they sat down beside her. Normally she would sample the banquet herself while Aziraphale talked to their dining companions, but tonight, she stayed glued to his shoulder. 

“Your husband is quite the host,” Aziraphale remarked. 

The countess’s eyes flitted to her husband, who was laughing uproariously at something a baron had just said. “Y-yes,” she said demurely, “he thrives on such company.” 

Aziraphale hummed. Bastet could hear the sympathy in it. “You know…” 

Bastet tensed. Here was their opening, and she wasn’t sure if she dreaded them failing miserably at this endeavor, or if she dreaded them _succeeding._

Aziraphale leaned in to murmur in the countess’s ear. “I wonder…oughtn’t he be spending more time with his family?” 

The countess glanced at him, surprised. “That’s…well, if we had anywhere to go—” 

“I hear Rouen is quite lovely this time of year.” 

Bastet squeezed her eyes shut, clinging to Aziraphale’s shirt. This was it. Any moment now, she would vanish into thin air, and Aziraphale would stumble back, crying out in pain, his wings turning black as he was swallowed into the bowels of the Earth— 

Ten seconds later, nothing had happened. She opened her eyes. 

The countess was looking thoughtfully at her husband across the room. Her dæmon had poked his head up, intrigued. “I…I’ve always wanted to visit France again…” she said. “We talked about it once…” 

She turned back to Aziraphale, taking his hand. _“Thank you.”_

Aziraphale beamed, and watched her rise and cross the room to her husband like a woman possessed. 

An hour later, she had taken England’s best chance at expedient political reform out of the hall to discuss holiday plans. The secret meeting never took place, and Henry I remained an all-powerful King of England. 

Fifteen years later, when the Anarchy began, Bastet would understand why the night’s assignment had been the work of Hell. 

xxx

They rendezvoused with Crowley and Lilith at a local pub to debrief. “So, how’d it go?” Crowley asked, not looking up from his cup of mead.

“Fine,” said Aziraphale. “He’ll leave with his wife.”

“And you? All your feathers still white? Still an angel?”

Aziraphale hid a grin in his own cup. “What else would I be, an aardvark?”

Bastet caught Crowley’s grin, too, before he could hide it as a devil-may-care smirk. “Told you nothing bad would happen to you.”

His golden eyes landed straight on Bastet. She got the sense he had been talking directly to _her_ with his last comment.

__

__

_I won’t let him Fall,_ he was saying. _I won’t let him lose you._

__

__

His fingers twitched as he looked at her. Bastet didn’t know why it made her so nervous. “We should be going,” she blurted out.

Crowley’s eyes followed them as they left the pub.


	7. The Globe Theatre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bastet notices the growing closeness between Aziraphale and Crowley—and between her and Lilith.

Here’s the thing. People didn’t usually talk to each other’s dæmons.

Oh, sure, they acknowledged in the back of their mind that the dæmon was _there._ It would be sickening to see someone without a dæmon, like looking at a mutilated corpse in the middle of a city square. But dæmons usually only talked to their person, or to other dæmons. Cross-contact with another person wasn’t usually the thing that was done. While humans had many social constructs that varied across cultures, this was one of the few universals. Even angels didn’t usually converse with each other’s souls.

And yet, every time Crowley met up with Aziraphale, he always said something to Bastet.

It didn’t make her uncomfortable, exactly. Not in a stranger-danger, stay-away-from-the-man-asking-you-to-come-into-his-white-van way. It was more like taking fumbling steps through speaking a language she wasn’t completely fluent in yet. She was always on guard for some etiquette breach without realizing it.

But Crowley was always so _nice_ to her. Sure, they teased each other, as friendly acquaintances did when they were establishing trust. But it was never malicious.

“If I didn’t know any better,” Aziraphale remarked to her one night in 1601, “I’d think he likes you.”

She stretched luxuriously across his lap as he continued brushing her fur. “Perhaps. And if he does, well. I’m technically your soul. What does that say about what he thinks of _you?”_

__

__

Aziraphale blushed at that. “He’s a demon,” he said halfheartedly.

“Mm-hm. And I’m _your_ dæmon. And he’s nice to me, like he’s nice to you. Just makes you wonder, that’s all.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Right. Tell that to whoever saw them at the Globe Theatre the next morning.

xxx

Aziraphale was feeding Bastet some grapes where she perched on his shoulder, when Crowley and Lilith showed up. “I thought you said we’d be inconspicuous here,” Crowley griped. “Blend in among the crowd?”

“Well, that was the idea,” Aziraphale muttered.

“You’re the one who wanted to see a play,” Bastet pointed out to the demon.

Crowley rolled his eyes. “This isn’t one of Shakespeare’s gloomy ones, is it? Oh, no _wonder_ nobody’s here—”

“I thought you liked gloomy,” said Bastet.

“ _Spooky._ I like _spooky._ There’s nothing spooky about watching some poor sods traipse around a stage lamenting their lot in life. Give me a funny one any day.”

“You cried at Romeo and Juliet,” Lilith offered from her usual perch on his shoulder. “And you helped _write_ that one—”

_“Shut. Up.”_

__

__

Aziraphale’s eyes alighted on Lilith. “Oh, your scales are looking marvelous today, my dear!”

Lilith grinned wide. “Thank you for noticing. I just shed! My sskin’s all sssmooth now!”

Aziraphale's fingers twitched at his side. Crowley was boring holes into Lilith with his eyes, minutely shaking his head.

Interesting.

“Pass the grapes, dear?” Bastet asked her angel. He obliged, though his mind looked elsewhere. She took the bundled fruit in her mouth and leapt down to the ground. Lilith eagerly followed.

“Don’t eat too much,” Crowley warned his dæmon. “You always get sluggish after a large meal.”

“Shedding takes a great deal of energy!” Aziraphale protested. He smiled down at Lilith. “You eat as much as you’d like.”

Lilith looked up smugly at Crowley. “I’m glad _sssomeone_ appreciates how hard I work!” 

He stuck out his tongue at her. She stuck out hers right back. Bastet rolled her eyes, and swallowed another grape.

Crowley and Lilith did have a little more of an…adversarial relationship? More than was usual between a person and their soul. Bastet didn’t always know if that was due to their inherent temperaments, or more to do with Lilith not being his first dæmon. Heavens, Crowley was even kinder to _Bastet_ sometimes.

In contrast, Aziraphale—though he spoke to Lilith just as often as Crowley spoke to Bastet—was always so _gentle_ with the snake dæmon. Crowley often made a fuss about the niceness, but he never chose to have the last word on the subject. 

It was all very interesting to Bastet. She didn’t often bring it up to Aziraphale, in case he decided to govern his conduct more carefully. When he did that, he wasn’t as happy.

Besides, she _wanted_ the banter with Crowley. Just as she wanted Crowley and Lilith to have her and Aziraphale’s kindness. Yes, Aziraphale’s wellbeing would always be her first priority, but why couldn’t she have a very close second priority, as well?

The playwright, William, came up to talk to Aziraphale and Crowley, begging them to give the actors more encouragement. His mockingbird dæmon fluttered down to Bastet and Lilith’s picnic. “Ladies,” he said in an oily tone, “if I could ask you to redirect your attention to the stage—”

Bastet and Lilith gave him their usual unblinking stare. His face fell. He hopped nervously from foot to foot, before hurriedly flying back up to William’s shoulder.

They tucked back into their grapes. While their purposes on Earth were often best served by blending in, the humans’ dæmons could always tell there was _something_ off about them. Sometimes it was annoying. But sometimes—like when you wanted to be left alone to eat grapes with your best friend in peace—it came in handy.

Bastet heard Aziraphale and Crowley’s conversation about Edinburgh. “Trading another assignment, are we?” she asked.

Lilith had just finished swallowing another grape whole. Three distinct bulges were traveling down her neck. “Easy jobs. It’sss just the travel we’d rather not do.”

“Oh, believe me, I understand completely,” said Bastet. “The number of times I’ve nearly been thrown from a carriage when a driver rounds a bend too quickly—”

Lilith chuckled. “Taking fast turnsss is half the _fun!_ It’s the sssmell I can’t stand. Can never get the sssstink of horssse shit out of my scales for weeksss.”

Bastet hummed in sympathy. “You can imagine how long it takes for me to clean stains out of my fur.”

Lilith stabbed her tail into the three remaining grapes, skewering them all like a kebab. She spun them around her tail, looking pensive.

“What?” Bastet asked.

“Oh, nothing. Jussst…I know we created thisss Arrangement to do each other’sss work, but…it would be nice to travel together. The four of ussss.”

Something lurched in Bastet’s middle. She suddenly had an absurd vision of Aziraphale and Crowley renting a country house together, sipping brandy on the back steps, her and Lilith chasing each other through the gardens to their hearts' content. 

She shook her head. _Absurd._

__

__

“You know this is risking enough as it is,” she murmured. “It’s dangerous for us to be seen together. If the wrong people found out…”

Her ears swiveled, as she heard Aziraphale murmur the exact same sentiment to Crowley: “If Hell finds out, they won’t just be angry. They’ll _destroy you.”_

__

__

Lilith gave her a too-wide grin, her fangs glistening with grape juice. “Crowley’s a demon of Hell. Danger comesss with the territory.”

For the first time, Bastet was overcome with the urge to gather Lilith close to her, loafing over her protectively while the serpent coiled within her fur. 

She refrained. The urge subsided.

But it wouldn’t be the last time she felt it.

xxx

While Aziraphale packed for their trip to Edinburgh, Bastet paced. “They take too many risks,” she said for the fourth time that evening. “And I don’t like it.”

“My dear,” said Aziraphale, “I know. You’ve said. And I don’t like it either, but unfortunately, it’s just as Lilith told you. They’re creatures of Hell. It’s inherently dangerous. I can’t imagine that’s a nice place to call home.”

“You think they call it _home?”_

__

__

“That’s not what I meant,” he said sharply. “Besides, I would argue that the biggest risk they’re taking right now involves their association with _us._ Should we break things off with them, tell them we’ll never speak again?”

There was that twisting feeling in Bastet’s stomach. Selfishly, that was the last thing she wanted to do. Besides, she knew how Crowley and Lilith would react to that.

“Exactly,” said Aziraphale. “I’m afraid there’s nothing for it now.”

Bastet leapt up onto the half-packed traveler’s bag Aziraphale was working on. “You see what I see. Don’t you think they’re a little too reckless?”

A troubled look crossed Aziraphale’s face. “Perhaps. But there’s little _we_ can do about it.”

He went to pick up another book. She shot out a paw over the cover to stop him, pleading into his eyes. “Can we at least agree to help them, if they ever need it? Beyond the whole Arrangement?”

Aziraphale pursed his lips. “I suppose. We technically did that in that awful lord’s dungeon in the sixth century.”

Bastet grinned. “And I’m sure they would do the same for us.”


	8. Frivolous Miracles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bastet and Aziraphale are reprimanded, with potentially-lethal consequences.

A century and a half later, Aziraphale finally made the decision to purchase a permanent abode. And it wouldn’t just be a home; it would be a _bookshop._

__

__

Bastet knew he’d been longing for this, ever since the monastery they’d resided in during the ninth century was raided by Vikings, and all their illuminated manuscripts burned in the fire. Then again, maybe the desire went back to the Library of Alexandria. The House of Wisdom in Baghdad had had a few close calls, too. 

Come to think of it, they’d never had much luck with fire threatening their stores of books. 

But this time, they would be more careful. No fire would ever threaten _this_ bookshop.

For now, the shelves were only beginning to be filled. Bastet loafed on one, watching Aziraphale lovingly catalogue each new shipment. He was currently at his new desk, miracling the dust off a misprinted thirteenth-century Bible.

“Is that the one with the drawing of Lilith trying to strangle Eve?” she asked.

Aziraphale flipped to near the front of the Bible, chuckling as he found the image. “Indeed. Quite a good likeness of her, though.”

Bastet hummed in agreement when he showed her. “They got her good side.”

The sharp chime of a miracle rang from the front door, carrying the scent of too much disinfectant.

Bastet’s fur stood on end. The miracle hadn’t been Aziraphale; he had warded the bookshop to keep out unwelcome visitors before opening day. 

But not all visitors could be guarded against.

“Aziraphale!”

He and Bastet turned, to see the Archangels Gabriel and Sandalphon, dressed in their usual human corporations, dandy attire, and wide, menacing smiles.

Aziraphale cleared his throat nervously. “Oh, G-Gabriel, Sandalphon. You must excuse the mess, I wasn’t—I wasn’t expecting visitors yet—”

“Just wanted to drop in, see how things are going. It's time for your millennial performance review,” said Gabriel, with a grin showing too many teeth. Sandalphon chuckled beside him.

Bastet, from her cringing perch on the bookshelf, kept her eyes on the Archangels’ dæmons. Gabriel’s golden eagle, Magdalena, made herself at home on the nearby coat rack. Sandalphon’s white lioness, Zephariah, was stalking the perimeter of the main floor. Both were glaring straight at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale paled. “My, ah…forgive me, but…I’ve never actually had a performance review in any of the past five millennia—”

Gabriel clapped a hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder, steering him further into the bookshop. “Well, that was because you didn’t need one! Don’t be nervous, though, you’ve been doing an excellent job. Well…except for this one thing…”

“Too many miracles,” Sandalphon said blandly. 

Aziraphale’s fingers started fiddling with his cravat. “Too—too many miracles?”

“Well, too many _frivolous_ miracles,” said Gabriel. “Now, I know, I know, it’s hard to keep a lid on it when you can manipulate the universe, but we have a responsibility here to follow God’s Plan to the letter.” His expression darkened. “You do _want_ to follow Her Plan, don’t you?”

“Um, y-yes!” Aziraphale stammered out. “Yes, yes, of course I do. _We,_ uh”—he glanced around for Bastet, who obligingly leapt off the shelf and clambered up into his arms—“we only want to—to serve God, and Her Plan to do Good among the humans—”

Gabriel patted Aziraphale’s shoulders, grinning his best encouraging-upper-management grin. “Excellent. Now really, you’ve been doing great work, just…leave off the unnecessary miracles?” He murmured out the corner of his mouth in a singsong voice, “I’d hate to have to audit you again.”

Aziraphale gave a tight nod. It went on for far too long. “Right.”

“ _Great,_ ” said Gabriel. “Now,” he turned briskly to Sandalphon, “we’d better be going. Good talk, good talk.” He and Sandalphon headed toward the shop entrance again. He gave Aziraphale a cheerful wave over his shoulder. “Be seeing you!”

Aziraphale gave them a stuttering wave back, and the Archangels departed.

Their dæmons, however, lingered.

Magdalena stared at Aziraphale from her perch on the coat rack. She hunched her wings over her body, her head lowering in a threatening display as she shrilled. Zephariah stalked over to Aziraphale, and gave a low growl.

Their point made, they also made their way to the entrance, and left to join their angels.

Bastet was quivering. She always did when they encountered Gabriel and Sandalphon. And _especially_ when they encountered Magdalena and Zephariah.

Without a word, Aziraphale turned to his desk again. The misprinted Bible was still open to the picture of Lilith. Next to it lay a paper that hadn’t been there before, embossed with gold leaf, written in sloping, elegant handwriting.

 _Official Reprimand,_ read the calligraphed title.

He set Bastet down on the desk, and closed the Bible. He took a rag from one of the drawers.

“No more frivolous miracles,” he mumbled to himself.

Bastet watched in dejected silence, as her angel began to dust off the book’s cover by hand.

xxx

If you’d asked Bastet, Aziraphale was taking the ‘too many frivolous miracles’ edict way too far.

Not dusting off book covers with miracles was one thing. That could easily be done the human way. Traveling by foot or carriage was a tolerable inconvenience, as well.

But not miracling themselves out of a prison cell in the Bastille?

“ _Please_ can we go home?” she asked Aziraphale for the hundredth time. She was pacing around the straw in the cell, in as far a circle as the chain she was tethered to permitted. The jailer’s dæmon had cinched it tight around her neck. It was starting to chafe.

“You know we can’t,” Aziraphale murmured. Still, he tried pulling at the chains around his wrists. They didn’t budge.

All this, because of some crêpes. _Parisian_ crêpes, sure. But still. It was most undignified.

The guillotine lowered again outside with a sickening _chop._ Bastet gulped. If Aziraphale was discorporated, she would just pop back up to Heaven along with his true form. But she still didn’t look forward to the immense pain he would have to go through.

The executioner and his vulture dæmon entered the cell. Aziraphale attempted to talk his way out of it—in broken French and then in English—but to no avail.

Until, that is, when the executioner froze in place, and that low, slippery voice lit up Bastet’s ears like lights on a Christmas tree: “Animals don’t kill each other with clever machines, angel. Only humans do that.”

Bastet turned, to see the rakish demon Crowley lounging in the corner of the cell, with Lilith coiled lazily on his shoulder.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale cooed.

Bastet started purring before she could help herself.

xxx

Lilith hadn’t expected for Crowley to have to miracle them inside the Bastille today. They’d popped over to Paris for a meeting with Hastur and Ligur, but the day before they were to receive their commendation for a bad job well done, they’d sensed an angel who needed rescuing.

Now, Lilith’s afternoon was heading in a far more pleasant direction. She was huddled under the table with Bastet at the café Aziraphale had chosen. He and Crowley were eating crêpes. (Well, Aziraphale was eating crêpes; Crowley was watching him.) Bastet was down below, eating her share. Lilith was watching her.

They could have technically sat on the tabletop to converse with their angel and demon. They could have sat on their shoulders, if they wanted.

But if they had, Aziraphale and Crowley would’ve noticed how _close_ Lilith was coiling next to Bastet. Just as they would have noticed Bastet lapsing into an absentminded purr, just from Lilith’s nearness.

Their souls were on the cusp of realizing something, even if they themselves couldn’t face it yet.

“I know Aziraphale can’t say it,” Bastet murmured, “but we truly are grateful. For the rescue.”

Lilith gave her head-tilt of a shrug. “You’ve done the same for usss.”

“Even so.”

Lilith smiled. Bastet smiled back.

“Oh,” said Lilith, “you’ve got sssome, uh…”

She gestured with her tail at Bastet’s whiskers, where a few drops of cream had gotten stuck. Bastet, flustered, tried to lick it away with her tongue, but couldn’t get in reach of it.

Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—she managed with her paws before Lilith could wipe it away for her.


	9. The Seine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Crowley and Lilith receive a commendation—and some unwanted pressure from their higher-ups.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This starts our journey into Angst Land! I'm sorry D:
> 
> (except not really because you know I love it >:DDDD)

That night, Crowley was supposed to meet with Dukes Hastur and Ligur. They always wanted to meet at night. Better for their whole aesthetic, or something. Aided lurking. Made them look creepier.

They already looked plenty creepy, Lilith thought. Not that she’d tell them that.

She never said a word in their presence.

As usual, Crowley made sure to be fashionably late to their meeting underneath the Pont Neuf bridge over the Seine. With their night vision, he and Lilith could still see the blood from the guillotine staining the water. 

Hastur and Ligur were already there. Hastur was smoking on a cigar, lighting their faces with a glow of hellfire. Ligur’s eyes—currently a bright yellow—shone unnaturally in the light.

“Hey, guys,” said Crowley. “Got something for me?”

Ligur grunted, and tossed him the slimy medal. “From Satan himself,” he said in his gravelly voice. “Saw your report on the violence here in Paris. Called it an achievement well-earned.”

“Yeah," said Crowley, "that Robespierre guy, didn’t expect the temptation to go so well on him, he’s really taking to the whole off-with-their-heads idea—”

“Yes, yes,” said Hastur, “we can all agree that Evil has triumphed in the city. But if you could run through it one more time, exactly how you accomplished this? It’s quite the big job, Crowley. Even for you.”

Lilith knew the game the Dukes were playing. They knew—or at least heavily suspected—that Crowley had been lying in his report. If Crowley told them something different than what he’d delivered to Satan, they’d catch him in the act. 

One might think lying wouldn’t be punishable by Hell. One might think it would be expected behavior of a demon. Encouraged, even.

One would be wrong. _Everything_ could be punished by Hell.

So, Crowley went off explaining the whole made-up temptation again, how he’d corrupted the people of France into executing thousands of their own countrymen. He told them exactly what was in the report, nothing more, and nothing less.

Lilith would’ve helped him by recalling certain details. But she stayed silent.

She kept her eyes on Hastur and Ligur’s dæmons.

Her memories before Earth were vague. She remembered flashes of light, brief bursts of pain, occasional vibrations of what she thought might be screams. But the first definite memory she had was of curling into Crowley’s hands, blind and wriggling, hearing him whispering to her to _stop moving so much, they’ll know you’re different, and we can’t stick out right now, capiche?_

__

__

Hastur’s frog and Ligur’s chameleon made no such movements. They didn’t speak. They didn’t breathe. Their eyes stared blankly ahead of them. Occasionally their limbs might shift when their demons made a corresponding hand gesture. Otherwise, they sat still as puppets without strings atop their masters’ heads.

Because that’s what Hastur and Ligur were to their dæmons. _Masters._

__

__

The Fallen weren’t meant to have souls that mattered. All they were meant to have was enough rage and nastiness to keep them moving forward in defying Heaven. 

They certainly weren’t meant to have dæmons that trembled in fear, seeking comfort in the warmth of their companion’s gentle, loving hands.

So, as much as Lilith wanted that right now, she had to stay as still as possible. She draped her body over Crowley’s shoulders, keeping her eyes glazed over. She didn’t even dare to let her tongue flick out to taste the air.

She could only wait, and listen to Crowley talk them out of trouble for the thousandth time, knowing that when Hastur and Ligur were gone, she and Crowley would soothe each other again.

“—so then I’m marching with the women right up to Versailles," Crowley was saying, "I don’t know where they got the gumption to tell the king exactly where he could stick it, but it really was a sight to behold—”

“You did this all by yourself?” Hastur asked.

Crowley shrugged one shoulder. Lilith let her body be jostled by it. “Pretty impressive, innit?”

“And that led to all the beheadings?” Ligur asked, in a tone that did not sound at all convinced.

“Well, yeah, _eventually_ ,” said Crowley. “There were a few National Assemblies and Tennis Court Oaths in there too, but it’s amazing what’ll set these humans off toward revolution, eh? Lilith and I were just talking about—”

He froze.

In retrospect, if he’d just kept talking, he could’ve drawn attention away from his mistake. The pause let it fully sink in.

“Er,” he tried to keep going, scratching nervously behind his ear, “me and the other revolutionaries, we were saying—” 

“Lilith?” Ligur asked. “Who’s Lilith?”

“Wait.”

Hastur’s black eyes were glittering in amusement. He was even _smiling_. Nothing good ever came out of that.

“Did you _name your dæmon?”_

__

__

“Uh…” Crowley stammered, “not…not _named_ , exactly, but it’s weird that we just call them after us, y’know? I mean, if I was gonna call you up, Hastur, and I said ‘hey, Hastur, how’s it going,’ you wouldn’t know if I was talking to demon-Hastur, or _dæmon_ -Hastur, and that’s another thing, how come we call ourselves ‘demons’ and our dæmons are also called ‘dæmons’, there should be another word for it—”

“No, there shouldn’t,” Hastur snapped. “There should be no other word for a dæmon, and no other name for a Fallen one’s dæmon, because _they don’t matter.”_

__

__

“We’d hate to think you were talking to yourself, Crowley,” Ligur sneered. “Though I guess anyone staying up here for too long will start to go a bit mad.”

Hastur took another long drag from his cigar. He blew the smoke directly in Lilith’s face. Lilith had to will herself not to cough.

“It’s unfortunate,” Hastur said, “that we must have dæmons at all. It’s something we apparently still need to get by in the world. But giving those souls a _name_ , or a _personality_ , and treating them as anything other than necessary headgear…that’s something we all rebelled against, long ago. You haven’t forgotten that, have you, Crowley?”

Crowley swallowed. “N—no, f’course not. No important souls here, nope.”

Hastur chuckled that raspy, sick chuckle. “That’s what we like to hear.”

He put out his still-burning cigar directly onto Lilith’s neck. 

It took all of Lilith’s willpower not to flinch. Not just from the pain—although that was considerable. But the fact that someone else had indirectly _touched_ her made her want to crawl out of her skin. Hastur might as well have flayed a newborn baby in front of its mother.

She didn’t know how Crowley managed to stay standing. She could see in her periphery how his face grew strained from the effort of staying neutral.

“Enjoy the medal,” Hastur sneered. Ligur smirked along with him. 

The ground swallowed them up again, as they returned to Hell.

The second they disappeared, Crowley staggered over to the stone arch of the bridge. He only just made it there as his knees buckled. He leaned against the stone, wheezing in breath, hunched over like he might collapse.

Lilith was so weak, she fell off his shoulders. She writhed on the ground, belly-up, helpless and squirming, trying to rid herself of that horrible feeling of _wrongness_ where Hastur had burned her.

“Crowley,” she cried out, _“Crowley, help, please—”_

__

__

Oh, but then his hands were scooping her up, and he was kneeling on the hard stone, clutching her to his heaving chest, and he was trembling too, but he was warm, and safe, and _hers._

__

__

“It’s alright, love,” he whispered against her scales, “it’s alright, I’ve got you, you’re alright…”

She nuzzled her head against his chin. He wasn’t always one for these overt displays of affection, but he nuzzled her right back, kissing her head, stroking her scales. Trying to soothe them both with the reconnection of their bond.

“Lemme see,” he murmured. He pulled her back enough that he could look at her neck. She winced as the pain returned to the forefront of their minds. “It’s not bad,” Crowley said softly, “it’ll heal right up, by your next shed we won’t even see it there—”

“That’s not the _point_ ,” she sobbed. “It _was_ there, and we both know it, and we both know _why.”_

__

__

He cuddled her against his chest again. Her body started looping over his hands, letting her scales rub against his skin. The second they found a place to stay for the night, she was demanding he let her inside his shirt. Anything for more skin-to-skin contact.

“I can’t keep doing this, Crowley,” she wailed. “We can’t, I _can’t_ , I—”

“Shhhh,” he soothed. “I know. I know, love.”

She buried her face against his neck. He kissed her scales again. “I’ll think of something,” he whispered. “Something so they won’t come near us again. You’ll see. We’ll be safe.” 

She started crying in earnest. She could feel how scared he was, too, but all he did was hold her, and give her another kiss. “I’ll find a way to keep you safe,” he whispered. “I promise.”


	10. A Favor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Crowley and Lilith ask for insurance. It doesn't go well for anyone involved.

It took Crowley a while to come up with a plan. It took him even longer—until the 1860s—to tell Lilith.

Lilith blanched at the idea. “You know what that could do to _usss_ , right?”

“Of course I _know_ ,” he snapped. “The point is that it’ll do the same thing to Hastur, Ligur, and anyone else who wants it.”

“And what do you think Hell is going to do when they hear we murdered two of their Dukes?”

“We’re not going to _use_ it. Just…threaten them a little.”

She glared at him. “‘Threaten them a little’?”

“Yeah. That’s how blackmail _works_. Promise to destroy them if they don’t leave us alone.”

She drummed her tail on the table she was coiled on. Considering. It was risky, but asserting themselves over Hell in any way was always going to be risky. What choice did they have?

“Ssso how do we get it?” she asked. “It’s not like we can jussst waltz in and ask a local vicar for it. They always love flicking that ssstuff at people.”

“Not a vicar,” said Crowley. “It’s too weak when humans bless it, anyway. Think… _holier_.”

Lilith’s jaw fell open. Then she unhinged her jaw, and let it fall even further.

Crowley shrugged. “What? We’re friends now. It’s not like he’d refuse. How much of the stuff do you think he’s got bubbling away in that bookshop?”

“I think we would’ve noticed that,” Lilith said dryly. “And you’d better sssell the idea to him better than you just did to me, or we’re toast.”

Crowley smirked. “I’m the original tempter. Selling ideas is what I do best.”

xxx

Crowley did not, in fact, do his best.

It probably didn’t help that he and Lilith were so nervous. She couldn’t bring herself to unclench her coils from where she was wrapped around Crowley’s walking stick.

Why did matters of imminent survival have to hinge on one afternoon’s conversation?

Sudden vibrations in the walking stick startled her. She looked down, to see Bastet tapping it with her paw. “Come down here,” she said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

Lilith obeyed. She coiled up tight on the ground instead.

“What’s gotten into you?” Bastet hissed. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. And I know there aren’t any in the park, I checked.”

Lilith didn’t laugh. Her neck burned.

Bastet brought her face right in front of Lilith’s, blue eyes staring into gold. “What _is_ the matter with you? You’ve been acting odd since we got here, Crowley too, now you will stop this silliness and tell me what’s going on—”

_“Out of the question.”_

Bastet looked up. It hadn’t been Lilith who had just spoken. It had been Aziraphale.

Now _he_ was the one who looked like he’d seen a ghost.

Aziraphale started arguing. Crowley protested. Bastet was following the volley with her eyes, looking more and more confused with every word.

Lilith sunk her head into the middle of her coils. This was going very, _very_ badly.

"Do you know what trouble I’d be in,” Aziraphale said testily, “if they knew I’d been… _fraternizing…”_

Oh, no.

Even as Aziraphale still vacillated, Lilith could feel the boiling frustration in Crowley start to spill over. _“Fraternizing?”_ he hissed.

Lilith had been trying to ignore it this whole time. But ever since Hastur had burned her, she’d seen Crowley closer to spitting venom these last few decades than he’d been since Rome. And somehow, even as he and Aziraphale traded senseless insults at each other, she got the feeling it all had something to do with her.

She heard Bastet give a shrill yowl of protest. “Will you two _please_ tell me what’s going on?” the cat snapped.

“We’re leaving, _that’s_ what’s going on,” Aziraphale snapped back. “I can clearly see when we aren’t wanted here.”

“Like I said,” spit Crowley, “I don’t need you."

“And the feeling is mutual! Obviously!"

With that, Aziraphale stormed off with a protesting Bastet in his arms, taking Crowley and Lilith’s last chance at protection with them.

xxx

_“Holy water?”_

Bastet stared at Aziraphale from her usual perch on a bookshelf, while Aziraphale donned his white gloves and reading glasses. “You heard me,” the angel said tersely. “He wants the one substance that could destroy him completely.”

Bastet stuttered for a second, trying to form coherent words. After a few attempts, she managed, _“Why?”_

“For ‘insurance’,” Aziraphale huffed. He selected a decrepit old tome from a shelf. “Whatever that means."

He spread the old book open on the desk, and retrieved his book binding thread and glue. But before he could sit down at his workspace, Bastet leapt onto the surface, standing directly in front of the book. “You’re an absolute _idiot_.”

Aziraphale’s mouth fell open in indignation. _“Excuse me?”_

“You heard me! ‘Insurance’ means he won’t use it on himself, but on other demons. And why else would he need to do that, if he wasn’t in danger from said demons?”

Aziraphale pursed his lips. “That’s not the point.”

“Then tell me,” Bastet growled, her fur standing on end, claws unsheathed, “what _is_ the point?”

“The point is that it could destroy _him_ just as easily!” Aziraphale snapped. “And we—” His voice lowered to a hissed whisper. “ _We_ have endangered him enough as it is, simply by being near him. If Gabriel and Sandalphon can pop in unannounced whenever they please, how long before they do so while Crowley and Lilith are here? And no amount of holy water would do anything to stop _them_.”

Bastet’s ears flattened. “That’s entirely different—”

“If we’re talking about how we are putting Crowley’s safety at risk, it’s not entirely different!” Aziraphale retorted. “And now he’s asking us to give him the most dangerous substance in the universe that could destroy him. You said yourself how reckless he is—”

“They would never—”

“It’s not a risk I am willing to allow them to take!”

Dæmon and angel glared at each other, locked in an impasse. Bastet’s tail swished back and forth behind her, telegraphing her discontent.

Aziraphale was the one to look away. He sighed, all his substance leaving him along with his breath as he thudded into his chair. “I have already inadvertently placed him in danger,” he said quietly. “I will not do so willingly. No matter the reason.”

A flood of emotions from her angel poured into Bastet. The heaviest guilt was sour in her mouth. But there was also something warm and syrupy, as dizzying as it was sweet, and sharp, and _terrifying_.

There was a word for what that feeling was. It was on the tip of Bastet’s tongue.

But as Aziraphale began forlornly repairing the old book’s binding, Bastet knew he wasn’t ready to hear it.

Not yet.

xxx

Lilith was attempting to hold onto Crowley’s walking stick as he prowled through the park. A flock of pigeons hurriedly scattered out of their way.

“Blessed angel,” Crowley was muttering under his breath, “don’t need his help, anyway. Could probably get one of those ponces in frock coats to get me holy water any day—”

“Will you stop,” said Lilith. Her voice was flat. Her dread had numbed her. Now she was just exhausted.

“Could even hire a team to get it. Westminster Abbey, now there’s an idea, they’ve probably got gallons of the stuff—”

“Crowley, can we stop?”

“Place is just open for visitors, right? Unless there’s a royal wedding on. Haven’t kept up with Victoria’s brood in ages, better pick a date they’re not getting hitched—”

_“Crowley, stop!”_

Crowley stopped, and glared down at Lilith. _“What?”_

“If I may,” she said, slithering up the walking stick and onto his arm, “offer some advice?”

Crowley sighed. “Don’t pretend like I’ve got a choice.”

Lilith glared at him. “You are an _absolute fucking idiot_.”

Crowley made the greatest put-upon face known to man, rolled his eyes, and kept walking.

But Lilith didn’t let up. “Did you think Aziraphale was going to give you the holy water before or after you told him you didn’t need him?”

“I _don’t_ ,” Crowley ground out. “I’ve gotten along just fine in the years without him—”

“At least let us talk to Bastet,” Lilith pleaded. “She seemed more confused, but if we just explain it to her, I’m sure she’d be willing to—”

“That’s the problem,” said Crowley. He stared straight ahead through his glasses, his jaw tightening. “I’m not supposed to talk to Bastet, am I?”

Before Lilith could ask him what he meant by that, she felt a frothing, white-hot _rage_ bubbling up in Crowley.

“That’s always been the problem, hasn’t it?” Crowley kept ranting. “I’m not supposed to talk to Bastet. I’m not supposed to talk to Aziraphale. I’m not even supposed to talk to _you_. You aren’t supposed to speak, or breathe, or feel, or do anything other than sit on my head, like any other Fallen soul! If you did, I wouldn’t need the fucking holy water in the first place!”

Lilith spluttered, fumbling for words. “I didn’t—you _made_ me this way—I didn’t ask to be a fully-formed dæmon—Heaven, I didn’t ask for you to make me at _all_ —”

_“Well maybe I shouldn’t have!”_

Lilith’s eyes widened.

What she saw in Crowley’s face withered her down to her occult marrow.

The immediate remorse in his golden eyes didn’t matter. The aching, hurried _shit-I’m-so-sorry-I-fucked-up-didn’t-I_ that was coming wouldn’t ever be enough.

She saw the split-second of hatred he had covered up.

She’d felt it from him, too. She’d felt it when Duke Hastur’s unholy fire had seared that brand into her skin. When Caligula’s horse dæmon had nearly trampled her to death. When the Christ child’s lamb dæmon had locked eyes with her and knew exactly what she was, and how she’d been formed.

All the way back to when she had first squirmed her way from Crowley’s blood-raw, trembling hands, and looked into his sulfur-yellowed eyes. She’d been so scared, and in so much pain, and the only right place in the world had been within his jagged light. She hadn’t known why his edges were so broken; only that it was where her pieces could fit alongside his.

She had been his shadow all these centuries. But his love for her was followed by a shadow, too, and just like their sharp edges, the longer she clung to him, the deeper it cut into her flesh.

Well. Enough was enough.

She crawled back down his arm, over the walking stick, and onto the ground.

“Lilith,” Crowley sighed. “C’mon, I’m in no mood for this.”

She kept crawling, over the dirt pathway, off into the grass.

“Lilith, _come back here.”_

Humans and their dæmons darted out of her path. She didn’t know if it was due to a miracle, or the universe finally listening to her, or from their instincts to respect the taboo against touching another’s dæmon. She didn’t care why.

“Lilith!” Crowley was shouting. “Lilith! _Lilith_!”

But it was too late. Lilith had slithered away, out of Crowley’s sight, and into the London streets.


	11. The Long Separation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bastet pouts, reminisces, and turns back too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're not quite into Soothe The Hurt territory, but hang in there, it's around the corner! :)

Bastet was good at pouting.

She’d had practice. As much as she loved Aziraphale, he’d given her plenty of reasons to pout over the millennia. Mostly they involved not getting dessert, or not letting her loaf in the sun when there were miracles to be performed.

This took the cake, though, because Aziraphale had never been this thick-skulled before.

She was technically a manifestation of his soul. That didn’t mean they had identical minds, though. And lately, she felt like his soul was wiser and more perceptive than he was himself.

Crowley and Lilith needed help. That much was obvious. But while she knew the best way to help them was by getting them what they needed, Aziraphale was of the opinion that the solution was to _avoid them_.

He was ashamed of his conduct by the duck pond, she knew. She knew he was afraid of acknowledging that his best friend was one of the Fallen. She knew he was terrified of Falling, himself. (So was she, for obvious reasons.)

But performing Crowley’s assigned temptations hadn’t made Aziraphale Fall. Letting humans go about their own ways hadn’t, either. Nor had making friends with a demon and his soul.

There was still a chance Aziraphale could Fall. It was still the worst fate Bastet could imagine. But if Crowley had already faced that worst fate, and was terrified of something _else_ …

She’d spent a great deal of time these last few decades loafing at the bookshop windowsill. Aziraphale complained that her adorable presence was inviting more customers in, so she made sure to cough up a few extra hairballs every time someone entered.

Still, she persisted in her vigil. Hoping against hope that the snake and tall redhead would pass by for a visit.

“Oooh, what a lovely dæmon!” a large woman cooed in the window. Bastet had to resist the urge to roll her eyes.

The woman’s marmot dæmon poked his head out of her hat. “What’s your name, dear?” he asked.

“Bastet,” she said snippily.

“Ooooh!” exclaimed the woman. She passed by (thankfully not into the shop). Bastet could still hear her chattering to her dæmon, “Like the goddess in Egypt!”

Now Bastet rolled her eyes. “I _was_ the goddess in Egypt,” she muttered under her breath. Those had been a good couple of centuries. Free baked goods for ages, in exchange for the odd blessing or two. It had been odd that the Egyptians had attached to her instead of Aziraphale himself, but her angel had never let her live it down.

Lilith had gotten the same idea later, and had set up shop as a snake goddess in Egypt, Greece, India, and even a small stint with the Celtic peoples here in the British Isles—even Ireland until Patrick had driven her and Crowley out, earning him a sainthood. Lilith had lapped up the praise. The poor dear seemed to need it, too.

“Shit, where have you got to…”

Bastet’s heart leapt into her mouth. _She knew that voice!_

She sprang to her feet, fur fluffed out in her excitement. She knew her pupils were likely round as saucers, but as she braced with her front paws on the windowsill, she didn’t care in the slightest.

Sure enough, across the busy street, there was Crowley. The 1920s had been good to his wardrobe! Such a nicely-cut suit!

She faltered as she took a closer look.

Whatever blessings time had bestowed on Crowley’s wardrobe, it seemed to have skipped out on the rest of him. He looked…

Well, to put it bluntly, he looked terrible.

The lines in his face, while usually making him distinguished and middle-aged like Aziraphale, now made him look haggard. He was pale, almost sickly and jaundiced. She couldn’t see his eyes beyond his dark glasses, but if she could, she would’ve bet her claws that his gaze had lost its usual spark.

She couldn’t see Lilith. That wasn’t cause for alarm, but it _was_ unusual. The snake dæmon wasn’t usually shy. Sometimes Crowley would shield her from humans out of protectiveness (and Bastet wasn’t sure if he realized he was doing it), but she didn’t usually _hide_.

His swagger was more muted than usual. He was sluggish as he sauntered down the street, disappearing into the crowd.

Bastet’s heart sank as Aziraphale appeared behind her. “You feel so melancholy,” he said as he pet her. “Whatever’s the matter?”

She lowered her head onto her paws. “You _know_ what the matter is.”

Aziraphale sighed. “Come away from that window. It’s not helping anyone.”

Bastet hesitated. Clearly, Aziraphale was right; Bastet had seen Crowley, and how had that helped any of them?

As she turned away, something small and black slithered across the street in a flash of scarlet. She hurriedly looked back.

Nothing. A trick of the light, then. False hope made manifest.

Bastet turned away.


	12. Return to Form

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lilith has second thoughts, and Crowley has a surprise.

It was 1941, and things for Lilith had gone from bad to worse.

She was currently coiled under the back steps of a butcher’s shop in London’s East End. So far, other dæmons, stray dogs, or wild animals hadn’t smelled her here. Too many competing scents.

Unlike humans, whose dæmons couldn’t travel more than a few yards away from them without unbearable agony, angels and demons could travel long distances from their souls—geometrically or metaphysically. The distance could be tiring after a few hundred years, but it wouldn’t destroy them.

Try telling that to Lilith. It had only been seventy-nine years, and she was already feeling spent of substance.

She could still feel the tether of her bond with Crowley. He was still in London. Not too far away from Aziraphale, actually.

She’d braved the distance to the angel’s bookshop only twice.

The first time had been in the 1920s. She’d slithered across the street, feeling the welcoming warmth of Aziraphale’s gentle aura encompassing the entire block. She had never visited without Crowley, but she was sure Aziraphale and Bastet would be sympathetic to her plight.

She’d lost her nerve when she saw Bastet sitting at one of the front windows. If Lilith sought out the cat dæmon or her angel, they would ask _what happened_. She wasn’t ready to pry open that wound yet.

The second time had been two weeks ago. She’d been ready to throw away her pride and break down, pleading for help. But she’d stopped, as she heard Aziraphale and Bastet speaking to some woman named Rose Montgomery about some sting operation at a church.

(The woman was clearly masking a German accent, and in spy circles in London these days, that only spelled trouble.)

Lilith had crawled away. She still wanted to talk to Aziraphale and Bastet. She missed them terribly.

But more than that, she wanted Crowley.

She wanted his gentle hands to pet her scales. She wanted to disappear underneath his shirt and coil up next to his heartbeat. She wanted to wrap herself around his ribcage in her version of a hug, and feel the vibrations of his voice all through her body. She wanted to laugh with him, to share secrets with him, to feel his happiness alongside her own.

She wanted to be his soul. She may not know how to be the dæmon he had once had as an angel, but she would do her best to be what he needed now.

She flicked her tongue out, tasting for any other supernatural presences. None were in the vicinity except the two she knew best.

She followed the thread of her bond with Crowley, and slithered off into the twilight.

xxx

Crowley had been living in a townhome in Kensington when she’d last seen him. Now, his scent led her to a posh apartment block in Mayfair. (She took note that he was now perhaps a five minute walk from Aziraphale’s shop.)

His flat was covered in similar wards to Aziraphale’s residence, warning away unwelcome visitors. It might not hold against a Duke of Hell, but it would remind any curious humans that they might have left a candle burning at home.

As the soul of the flat’s occupant, the door opened for her without question. Odd, that she could be so easily welcomed home to a place she’d never been before.

The flat hardly had any furniture at all. _Spartan_ was too generous a word. There were some interesting serpent-themed statues around, but otherwise, not much.

She found him in the study.

It seemed he’d brought the throne from their last residence. He slouched in his seat, his feet propped up on the desk. He wasn’t wearing any dark glasses, though his fedora was tilted down over his eyes. Even in his three-piece suit, he still looked like he’d been burning the candle in as many ends as could fit in ten-dimensional space. Had his face always been weathered with that many wrinkles around his eyes and mouth?

She supposed it must be exhausting, to live seventy-nine years without one’s soul nearby. He looked as drained as she felt.

Without a word, she slithered up the throne, and burrowed into his shirtsleeve. She followed the decorative veins, the nonessential heartbeat, all the way up his arm, to the center of his chest.

He didn’t twitch a single muscle, but she could feel his immediate relief alongside her own.

She poked her head out of his collar, to wind once around his neck. The beginnings of his stubble scratched pleasantly along her scales.

Even that paled in comparison to the joy of him caressing her spine again. She flicked her tongue against his chin in her version of a kiss.

“What made you come back?” he asked softly.

She squeezed her coils around his shoulders in a hug. “Thisss,” she whispered.

His fingers went under her chin, encouraging her to meet his eyes. His golden irises glowed bright in the dark of the evening, just as hers did.

“I shouldn’t have said what I said,” he murmured. “And I didn’t mean it.”

Now her eyes were glistening with more than just demonic energy. The thing to say now was probably, ‘I know you didn’t mean it’ or ‘I’m sorry, too.’ But neither of those things were true, and she would never lie to Crowley about anything.

Instead, she let her eyes fill with the beginnings of tears, let Crowley start stroking her head with the knuckles of one finger, and listened. “I wouldn’t change a thing about you, Lilith,” he said. “Not a blessed thing. You’re the best dæmon anyone could ask for.”

She couldn’t help her chuckle. “Quite the ssself-aggrandizing sstatement. You’re complimenting your own sssoul.”

He shrugged. “I’m a demon. Prideful statements’ll fill my Deadly Sin quota for the week.”

She laughed, and nuzzled against his face. He met her with a grin, and a kiss to her neck.

“Oh, right,” he said, “um…I got you something. Well, for both of us, but didn’t want to use it without y—uh…didn’t feel right…”

She grinned wide. “I get a welcome home presssent? You shouldn’t have, you sssweetheart!”

He rolled his eyes. “Right, tell the whole world,” he muttered. But as he grabbed a pair of sunglasses on their way to the door, she didn’t miss his smile.

xxx

Lilith was surprised when they walked outside. “What did you get me, a parade float?” she asked teasingly in his ear. “An eight-foot-tall World’s Bessst Dæmon ssstatue?”

“Better than that,” said Crowley.

“My own golden chariot? Ooh, do I get a tiny crown to wear?”

“Sod that. It’s better.”

_“Better than a tiny crown?”_

He stopped. “See for yourself.”

She looked. And gasped.

She’d seen in the last seventy-nine years how the humans had developed their transportation. Machinery was finally leaving the horse-drawn carriage behind. While these newfangled ‘automobiles’ had often nearly squished her flat as she’d crossed the streets in the last few decades, she’d envied the flashiness of their motors, their unmatched speeds, and the beauty of their sleek designs.

But the 1926 black Bentley sitting in front of them?

It put them all to shame.

“Had my eye on it for a while,” said Crowley. “Decided to go with the ‘26 model. More horsepower, always purrs whenever they start up. Went with black, f’course. Nothing like seeing them whiz by.”

Lilith slithered down his arm to inspect the car more closely. She couldn’t parse her words yet. How could she, with a gift like this?

Crowley tapped the window, indicating a large wooden bar hanging two inches from the top of the cabin, parallel to the windshield. “Wanted to give you a place to hold on. Thought you might…that we could, y’know…”

She turned back to him, her pupils blown to near-circles. “Can we drive it?” she asked, breathless.

Even without her bond with Crowley, she would've seen the relief in his expression. With a snap of his fingers, the door swung open.

They settled in. Lilith flared her nostrils to take in the leathery scent of the interior. She wrapped her body securely around the thoughtfully-placed bar on top. It would give her a perfect copilot’s view of the road ahead.

Crowley, meanwhile, was rubbing his palms over the steering wheel, the odometer, the gearshift, the clutch. His pupils were widening, too.

With a gentle flourish of his fingers, the engine rumbled to life. Lilith gripped her body around the bar more tightly, just as Crowley gripped the steering wheel.

For the first time in seventy-nine years, their emotions synced together, as twin sparks of excitement curled in their bellies.

They grinned.

Crowley _floored it._

The Bentley roared off on its maiden voyage, squealing to 125mph in less than three seconds, beginning her dominance of London’s streets by striking fear in the hearts of unsuspecting pedestrians for the very first time.

All the while, a demon and his soul whooped and cackled with glee.


	13. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Crowley reveals something to Lilith—and Bastet reveals something to Aziraphale.

By the time they stopped, night had truly sunken in. Crowley had driven them out of London, stopping by the coast in the South Downs. Now, he was lying on his back on the roof of the cooling Bentley. Lilith curled up languidly on his chest, luxuriating in his gentle caresses on her scales.

“It’sss nice to get away from London sometimess,” she said. “Hard to sssleep at night with all the bombss.”

“Mm,” said Crowley. “Haven’t slept much lately.”

(They both knew there was more to their insomnia than the current World War. But neither of them volunteered to broach the difficult subject, so it went unexamined for now.)

“Easssier to see the ssstars, too,” said Lilith.

Crowley was quiet.

Lilith glanced at him. She could feel something from him, something almost-but-not-quite bitter, like the last dregs of a cup of coffee that had long since gone cold on the counter.

“I built them,” Crowley said softly.

Lilith tried her hardest not to react too much. She probably failed. “The ssstars?”

Crowley nodded. “Not all by myself. Was on a team. Nebulas, n’stuff.” He pointed toward a pinprick slightly brighter than the others. “Helped with Betelgeuse. Piece of work, that was. And over there”—his finger shifted slightly to the right—“I worked in the Orion star nursery for a while. Built some of the finger-y bits.”

Lilith lay quietly, listening as Crowley kept talking, soaking in the vibrations from his chest. She worried this spell would break if she interrupted him.

But when he paused in the middle of telling her about Alpha Centauri, she couldn’t help herself: “You’ve never talked about it before.”

“What, the stars?”

She was quiet again. Summoning her courage. “No,” she murmured. “Being an angel.”

He shrugged. “Wasn’t much to tell. Not much different from being a demon. Different boss, that’s all.”

Lilith retreated further into her coils again. “That wasssn’t the only difference.”

But before she could bury her head in the loops of her body, Crowley caught her chin with a finger, making her meet his eyes. “That was then,” he said firmly. “This is now.”

She smiled, and hissed softly at him in affection. Just as gently, he hissed back.

She relaxed onto his chest again, letting him resume stroking her scales. “What were you sssaying? About Alpha Centauri?”

“Binary star system,” he said. “Two stars about the size of the Sun. Not too far from Earth. Always orbiting each other, so closely they look like the same star.” He chuckled lowly. “We used to call it the Dæmon Star, like a person and their soul, the-two-who-are-actually-one.”

Lilith grinned. “I thought it sssounded more like you and Aziraphale.”

His fingers paused. She could feel his chest freeze underneath her for a second. “I dunno about that,” he said. “He hasn’t talked to me since…”

“But you’re still _friendsss_.”

He shrugged. “I guess so.” His voice sounded too even for the fear and regret she felt within his heart. She heard the _I hope so_ he really meant to say.

She perked her head up. “I know where he’ll be tonight.”

He raised a brow at her. She saw—and felt—the flicker of hope in his eyes, even behind the dark glasses he always used to hide his feelings from others. But not from her. Never from her.

“I didn’t _sssee_ him,” she clarified. “I heard him, a few daysss ago. He’s gotten mixed up in something dangerousss. Might be in trouble.”

Even through his lingering fear and trembling, fragile hope, his smile won out in the end. “Well,” he said, “we can’t have that, can we?”

xxx

The second time Bastet would ever ride in the Bentley, she would decide she didn’t like it. She would claw into Aziraphale’s clothes the entire time, and would nearly get sick on the upholstery. She would be irrationally jealous of how much Lilith complimented its engine for how it _purred_. It would grow on her, but it would be a love-hate relationship for a few decades.

But this first time she rode in the Bentley, she couldn’t focus on anything else but the thrill of seeing Crowley and Lilith again.

All four of them were acting strangely, she realized as they returned from the demolished church and stepped inside the bookshop. Aziraphale and Crowley were forcing too much casual calmness into their words. They drained their scotch glasses too quickly. Lilith was gripping too tightly to Crowley’s arm; as much as Bastet tried to silently coax her down to talk with her, Lilith wouldn’t let go of her demon.

For all their deliberate nonchalance, there was something screaming underneath, but _no one_ was acknowledging it. Bastet worried she was going mad, hearing this undercurrent no one else was aware of.

Around dawn, the conversation abruptly fell silent.

Aziraphale stared at his empty glass. Crowley was swirling his around, though it was equally-empty. Lilith ducked her head.

Bastet opened her mouth to speak.

“Would you like—” blurted out Aziraphale.

“Should get going,” Crowley said at the same time.

Bastet shut her mouth.

Crowley and Lilith departed. They didn’t say in so many words that they would visit more often, but from the way they waved with hand and tail over Crowley’s shoulder, Bastet couldn’t help reading into the implication. It was more of a _See You Around, Old Pal_ than a _Goodbye Forever, Angel-Who-Was-Formerly-My-Friend-Before-Turning-Me-Down._

Because they _were_ still friends. Why else would Crowley hop down the aisle of a church, burning his soles on consecrated ground while Lilith cautiously clung to his arm, to _stop you two getting into trouble?_

However. That didn’t explain everything.

Bastet leapt onto the windowsill to watch the demon and snake slide into their shiny black car. She saw Aziraphale’s approach in the window’s reflection, just as the demon drove away.

As the Bentley’s engine roared into the distance, it left behind an oppressive silence in the bookshop.

Bastet turned to look at Aziraphale, her sweet, wonderful, (admittedly gullible) angel. He was swallowing hard. His lips pressed tightly together. Even from here, she could hear his heart pounding like a hummingbird’s wings. The sweat at his hairline wasn’t just from the hat he had been wearing.

His knuckles were white, as he clutched onto the satchel of books in his hands.

 _That’s_ what wasn’t easily explained. That was the undercurrent screaming at Bastet through her bond with Aziraphale.

Crowley and Lilith saving their lives could be explained by friendship. Perhaps even for some self-serving purpose, if anyone could still be cynical about the Arrangement after all this time.

Crowley and Lilith saving their books, though. That… _that_ was…

“How long have you known?” Aziraphale asked quietly.

Bastet cocked her head at him. She kept her voice gentle, in light of the turmoil she could feel rising in his throat. “Which part? That you love him?”

His fingers tightened on the satchel.

“Or that he loves you?”

He closed his eyes, his face falling. His expression would’ve been at home in an oncologist’s office.

There was little she could do to comfort him, she knew, except give him the honesty he needed to hear: “Either way, the answer is the same. The last few centuries or so.”

He looked at her, stricken. “Why—why didn’t you _tell me_?”

She smiled sadly at him. “Because you weren’t ready to hear it yet.”

He didn’t have any reply. He looked away, back out the window. She thought she could see his eyes shining, before he blinked hard, and it was gone.

She crept closer to rub her head against his hand. He started scratching behind her ears on reflex, but his mind was far away.

“You know what we have to do now?” she asked.

He nodded. His countenance became all steel again, like the soldier he had been trained to be. “Yes. I suppose I do.”


	14. Understandings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lilith and Crowley receive an unexpected gift.

Lilith liked the 1960s.

Technology was cranking along steadily. Art was, too—this was definitely her and Crowley’s favorite decade so far when it came to music. Cinema was becoming one of their new favorite pastimes. Drugs were in vogue, fashion dazzled in technicolor, and enough humans were starting to become less repressed about sexuality again. It was a time to be alive.

As it happened, _staying_ alive was a business she and Crowley were quite invested in: they’d just finished a meeting with their new heist team. Their long-sought-after insurance would be in their hands (well, Crowley’s hands) at last.

“What wasss with that Shadwell guy?” she whispered in Crowley’s ear.

“Dunno,” said Crowley. “Seems desperate for money, though. Which means he’ll get the job done.”

They crossed the street to the Bentley. “I didn’t know humans were still hunting down witchessss,” Lilith remarked. “All for ‘calling their dæmonsss funny namesss’?”

“Humans get strange ideas sometimes,” said Crowley. “Still, might be useful. Whole army of human operatives?”

“Perhapsss,” said Lilith. She wrapped her body tighter around Crowley’s shoulders as he circled around to the driver's side door of the Bentley. “Firssst order of businessss is getting our insurance. As long as nothing standsss in the way of—”

She paused just as Crowley opened the door, when they each laid eyes on Bastet staring up at them from the driver’s seat. Aziraphale sat in the front passenger seat, giving them a nervous grin in greeting.

“What are you two doing here?” Crowley asked when he’d found his voice.

Aziraphale turned away, facing the windshield. “Needed a word with you.”

Crowley’s jaw snapped shut. He looked back down to Bastet. Her searching stare lingered on them for another second, before she obligingly jumped to Aziraphale’s lap. She turtled there, keeping a watchful eye on Crowley as he slid into his seat.

The door shut. “What?” asked Crowley.

As Aziraphale started nervously rambling, Lilith slid down Crowley’s arm, into his lap. “Hey,” she whispered to Bastet.

Bastet didn’t reply. She kept her eyes low. The tip of her tail was twitching; Lilith immediately recognized the nervous tell.

“I hear you’re setting up a… _caper_ …to rob a church,” Aziraphale said.

Lilith coiled up defensively tight in Crowley’s lap. One of his hands settled on her back.

 _This_ must be what Bastet was nervous about. Lilith and Crowley had been found out, and now it was the angelic pair’s duty to thwart them. Even if it was to save them from a task that put their safety at risk.

“You told me what you think,” Crowley said dryly, “a hundred and five years ago—”

“And I haven’t changed my mind,” said Aziraphale. But his voice softened as he said, “But I can’t have you risking your life. Not even for something dangerous. So…”

Every muscle in Lilith’s body froze, as Aziraphale held out a small, tartan thermos.

“You can call off the robbery,” he murmured. “Don’t go unscrewing the cap.”

Lilith couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe as Crowley delicately took the thermos, careful to not let his fingers touch Aziraphale’s. She couldn’t breathe as he stared at the bottle from behind his dark glasses. She couldn’t breathe as he asked if it was the real thing (it seemed he was as disbelieving as her), only for Aziraphale to confirm it.

She couldn’t breathe as she locked eyes with Bastet, seeing the same kindness, sorrow, and yearning reflected back at her.

Something was uncoiling in Lilith’s long ribcage. The truth she’d known all along for centuries, no matter how much she’d pushed it away as a moment’s spark, a trick of the soul. As much as she’d tried to avoid the hope, for fear of it collapsing on her already-brittle heart, those sparks had caught into a glowing fire over these long years.

And tonight, for the first time, was the clearest she’d seen that fire in her best friend’s slit-pupiled eyes.

“Can I…drop you anywhere?” Crowley was asking Aziraphale.

Lilith coiled her tail around his arm in sympathy. She couldn’t say anything, but he had even less leeway to speak the truth than his soul did. It was simply too dangerous a truth to admit out loud. He’d had to find his own codes over the centuries, dancing around his real feelings, though he meant the same words in his heart as she did.

And Aziraphale, the brave, clever angel whose leg Bastet was clinging to, was just as fluent in this secret script. So when he said, “Perhaps one day we could, I don’t know, go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz…”

Lilith heard the meaning, loud and clear. It was the same sorrowful promise of the neon lights reflected in Bastet’s blue eyes.

“I’ll give you a lift,” Crowley couldn’t help but plead, “anywhere you want to go.”

 _Please_ , Lilith begged with him, _please, please, please, give us something_ , anything…

But Aziraphale’s answer was a foregone conclusion. What else could an angel say to a demon’s invitation for something more? Even if it was phrased as gently as it could be:

“You go too fast for me, Crowley.”

It was almost cruel how much hope it gave them, even as it killed that hope in the same sentence it was uttered. Lilith saw it breathe its first and last in Bastet’s trembling lip.

Aziraphale gathered Bastet in his arms, and opened his car door. Lilith couldn’t help herself; she lurched forward. “Bastet,” she whispered.

Aziraphale paused in getting out of the car. Regret was writ large on his face. But he paused all the same, for the two dæmons’ sakes.

As Bastet looked at Lilith, wordless promises and apologies tumbling from her pained expression, Lilith realized:

Bastet _knew_.

She knew that secret truth they couldn’t speak. She’d tended this fire to life, nurtured its warmth like something precious, just as Lilith had all these years.

But, while Bastet wasn’t any freer than Lilith to give voice to it, she could say more than Aziraphale. “Stay safe,” she whispered to Lilith. Her eyes flitted to Crowley. “Both of you.”

Lilith heard Crowley swallow.

Aziraphale could only linger a second more. Then he was climbing out his side of the car, shutting the door behind him, and Lilith and her demon were alone.

xxx

The flat was quiet.

It wasn’t always so. Crowley talked to himself sometimes, or made pithy comments at whatever television program he was watching. He and Lilith liked to annoy and amuse each other for hours on end. The poor houseplants were often caught in the crossfire.

But for the last thirty minutes, Crowley had been in the same position—standing at his desk, braced on the edge with both palms, hunched over where the holiest of holy thermoses sat proclaiming its horrible truth to the whole world—in complete silence.

Lilith sat in her spot on Crowley’s shoulder. She was squeezing her body around him in a tighter hug than usual, trying to soothe him in his current state.

He was feeling a lot of emotions right now. So many that she couldn’t parse all of them at once. They would have to sort through this piecemeal, one jagged edge of heartache at a time, over the next few decades.

Still, she knew they would have to start on the same page.

“You know that he lovesss you,” she said softly.

Crowley stayed still. But a bomb might as well have detonated in the flat, with how loudly she heard his heart ricocheting around his ribs.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Yeah, I know.”

Still, from the way his jaw tightened, she got the feeling that he _hadn’t_ known—or at least hadn't fully acknowledged it as something tangible—before he’d been handed the incriminating thermos tonight.

She squeezed his shoulders tighter. “And you know you love him.”

His lips pressed tightly together. For once, he didn’t say anything. Just tensed his eyelids, exhaled slowly through his nose, and nodded.

Lilith joined him in staring at the thermos. It was covered in Aziraphale’s personal tartan. Not Heaven’s tartan. _Aziraphale’s_.

“I sssuppose…that doesn’t make things any easssier,” she said slowly. “Makesss it harder, really.”

Crowley didn’t reply. They lapsed back into silence.

After another moment, Crowley gingerly picked up the thermos. With careful steps, he carried it to the wall safe that hadn’t thought to be there until three seconds ago. How thoughtful of it to manifest now.

With one last look, Crowley slowly closed the door on the little tartan container. The safe clicked shut, sealing it away from the rest of the world.

There it would remain, until the time was right.


	15. The Start of the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Crowley and Lilith realize The End of Days are upon them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been a while since I last updated. Depression has hit me hard again. I'm in a treatment program while I take time off work, but it's still hard to motivate to do anything. My therapist said it would be good for me to do things I used to enjoy even if I don't feel like it, so I figured I'd go back to posting again. 
> 
> I left this fic written up through Chapter 24, so hopefully I'll be able to write more before I catch up. Otherwise we'll have a long wait for me to write more. We'll see how this goes.
> 
> Thank you everyone who's read up to this point <3

The next few decades were good to Lilith and Crowley. With the cache of holy water secured in their possession, they could be more relaxed in how they demon-ed about London, stirring up trouble wherever they went. No need to fret about what might happen, if any pesky Dukes of Hell caught them in a moment of toeing the company line to less than their satisfaction.

Instead, they could spend the end of the twentieth century, and the beginning of the twenty-first, having unadulterated, dishonest-to-badness _fun_.

As those damned years went by, Lilith saw Crowley relaxing. His shoulders weren’t as tense where she grabbed onto them. He sped casually through London’s streets with significantly fewer cares than before. They sang off-key duets to all their favorite songs as they sped along, savoring them as long as possible before they turned into _The Best of Queen_.

But, they should’ve known all those carefree years were only borrowed.

As they pulled up to the graveyard, Lilith slid from her usual perch on the wooden bar near the windshield, and draped herself over Crowley’s shoulders. She went limp, eyes wide and unblinking ahead of her, as Crowley got out and slammed the car door on the operatic section of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’ His shoulder-length hair tickled her scales as he sauntered over to the two Dukes of Hell.

Just because they had an ace in the hole should their straits become dire, didn’t mean they could prance around showing their entire hand. Lilith still hid her true nature when meeting with other demons.

So, as Crowley made smart-alecky excuses to Dukes Hastur and Ligur about his lateness and the deeds of the day, Lilith pretended to everyone present that her beloved demon didn’t have a healthy, functioning soul. He was careful in what he said, too, using his brash charm and I-know-the-devil-loves-me schtick, to deflect attention away from the little serpent dangling limply from his shoulders. The less they noticed her, the safer she would be.

Fortunately, it appeared the Dukes had something else on their minds; they breezed right through Crowley’s explanation of shutting down London's mobile phone networks.

Then they handed him The Basket.

In hindsight, Lilith and Crowley really should’ve seen it coming. It had been over six thousand years, after all. They’d had a particularly tense 1996, as that had been the literal six thousandth year of the Earth’s continued spinning ‘round the Sun. But once the clock had chimed midnight at the start of ‘97, they’d shrugged, and remarked that perhaps that part of the Great Plan hadn’t been meant literally.

They’d thought they had time. They hadn’t.

xxx

The second they drove out of sight of the graveyard, Lilith stirred back to life. “I guessss it was too good to lassst,” she lamented.

Crowley echoed the sentiment, cursing under his breath. "ShitshitshitshitshitSHIT—"

Lilith was about to speak again, but Satan speaking through Freddie Mercury’s voice cut her off. She dutifully fell silent. If there was anyone worse to hear her speak than Dukes Hastur and Ligur…

“ _HERE ARE YOUR INSTRUCTIONS_ ,” Satan said. “ _THIS IS THE BIG ONE, CROWLEY_.”

Lilith clutched tightly to Crowley’s shoulders, as the infernal fog flowed into his eyes.

She hated this part. _Hated_ it. It was bad enough that she had to pretend to be mindless, but when this happened, Crowley’s emotions were literally _taken away_ from her. His body became a lifeless shell, his side of their bond going unnaturally quiet. If he didn’t have her to look out for him in these moments—

A truck barreled straight for them. She screamed, and grabbed the steering wheel with her tail, jerking the Bentley out of the way.

Crowley came to a second later, and wrenched them back into their lane. “Got it!” he shouted over her.

“I got it firssst!” she scolded him.

As if protesting this fact further, a high-pitched cry started shrilling from the backseat.

“Shit!” Crowley swore again. “Can you take care of that?”

She poked her head over to the backseat. Lord Below, was there anything she wanted to do less? “Why don’t I drive, while _you_ take care of it?”

“You can reach him easier!”

“I can’t even touch him! You’re the one who rocked all those crying babiesss to ssssleep while we hid in the Ark—”

“Y’know what, you’re right, why don’t I head back there. And when Duke Hastur pops by to check on us at the convent, he won’t be at all surprised to see my dæmon _driving my fucking car!_ ”

She groaned loudly in exasperation, and slithered over to the wicker basket on the backseat. The lid had popped open. Inside, lying on a little red blanket, was a golden-haired baby, scrunching up his face as he wailed. His dæmon—currently in the shape of a fuzz-covered, newborn fruit bat—was making frantic squeaking noises beside him as she attempted to find comfort.

Lilith grimaced. It wasn’t that she didn’t like babies, but she didn’t want to spend any more time than necessary in the breathing radius of this one.

The baby, not finding the comfort he was seeking, cried harder. His dæmon transformed into a pale green caterpillar, and curled up in a ball by his head.

Lilith gingerly shut the basket’s lid. That helped muffle the sound, at least? Not knowing what else she could do—like she’d told Crowley, she couldn’t touch the damn kid—she took the basket’s handle in her tail, and started sliding it back and forth, in as close to a rocking motion as she could manage in a moving car.

It seemed to do the trick. Within minutes, the Antichrist went back to sleep.

xxx

Lilith made the decision to stay alert when they rolled up to the convent. Blending in with the humans took precedence over lying in wait for an unexpected Duke’s visit. Still, she stayed in his jacket pocket out of caution, tasting the air with her tongue where she poked her head out. She could make her presence known, but could retreat at the first sign of trouble.

They passed the American ambassador and his hedgehog dæmon without much fanfare. They snaked their way through the halls of the old building, eventually happening upon a young nun milling about with a tin of biscuits. Her chipmunk dæmon on her shoulder had suspiciously-full cheeks, with crumbs of pink icing clinging to his whiskers.

Crowley handed off the Antichrist. The nun cooed over the baby and his dæmon— _ooh, she turned into a wittle puppy doggy, just like the prophecy says he’ll choose one day!_ —but Lilith and Crowley didn’t want to stick around longer than necessary. Crowley instructed the nun to take the baby up to Room Three, and with an eyeroll, he left her to her mushiness.

As the Bentley squealed off into the night, Lilith resumed her usual perch on the wooden bar at the windshield. “Ssso now we’re babysssitters for the next eleven yearsss,” she remarked.

“Yep,” Crowley said with a sigh. “Make sure the little tyke turns out properly Evil, n’all that.”

Lilith gripped the bar tighter as they rounded a bend. “Hm. Weird that it’sss not predetermined like that.”

“He’s supposed to be like a human,” said Crowley. “That’s the point. ‘Look how easy God’s Chosen Species can fall to Evil.’ Same as when Jesus nearly tapped out of His destiny, just in reverse. You remember the PowerPoint.”

“Yesss, but isss it really him _choosing_ Evil, if that’sss all he’s brought up to be? Ssseems to me, if Sssatan was really wanting to make a fair point—”

“It’s Satan, when does _fair_ ever enter the equation?”

“—he’d give the boy both Evil _and_ Good influencesss. That way, if he wasss raised with both, and he hasss the chance to choose either one, choosing Evil would have more…I don’t know, moral weight? The whole thing just sssounds dreadfully inefficient. If Sssatan _really_ didn’t want anything left to chance, he might as well make a fully-formed Antichrissst right now—”

“Hang on.”

Lilith paused. “What?”

“Say that again.”

“What? Making a fully-formed Antichrissst?”

“Nonono, the part about Evil and Good.”

Lilith pondered back to what she’d said. “If he wasss raised with both Evil and Good influencesss, and hasss the chance to choose either one…”

She trailed off. Her eyes widened.

She looked at Crowley. They burst into matching grins.

Crowley glanced up to the voice-activated call system speaker. “Call Aziraphale.”

Lilith laughed wildly into the windshield, high-fiving Crowley with her tail. “ _We are ssso brilliant!_ ”

“ _Sorry, all lines to London are currently busy_ ,” informed the call system speaker. “ _Please hang up and try your call again._ ”

Lilith and Crowley both groaned in unison.


End file.
